Category Archives: Penny

I took our dog Penny to the Vet the other day for her regular check-up and she needed shots.  I also wanted to talk to the doctor about the dog’s inability to stay out of her crate whenever we leave the house.  She runs around the house panting to the point of almost hyper-ventilating (if I could get a paper bag over her snout without her eating it I’d be inclined to have her breathe into that).  The dog, it seemed, suffered from anxiety.  But she’s a dog.  Dogs don’t get anxiety.

“She could definitely be suffering from Separation Anxiety.” Deadpanned our veterinarian.

“Come again doc?”

“Absolutely.  In fact, it is very common with dogs to experience that sort of anxiety.”  And just when I thought that layer of icing on this cake were not quite thick enough, he drops, “I could prescribe Prozac for her if you want.”

I didn’t know if I should take him seriously or look for hidden cameras?

“Prozac?”

“That would help to calm her down for sure.”

So would Quaaludes but I’m not feeding them to her in her dog food any time soon.

Then I look down to the dog and she is, quite literally, giving me puppy dog eyes. I give her the, “What do you know, you’re a dog”, look.  I turn to my kids (who I had taken with me) and they are giving me the same eyes the dog is giving me.  I give them the, “Just calm down”, look.  My oldest, Hannah, asks me, “Daddy, is Penny going to be ok?”  Her voice cracks as she is on the verge of tears.

“Penny will be fine.”

“Does she have to take medicine like Mommy takes?”

“Shhh!”

This is why, before we got this dog, I didn’t want this dog.  Because I knew, as time went one, everyone in my family, including myself, would begin to ascribe humanity to the dog.  We would begin to look at our dog as more than a furry genitalia licking mouth full of teeth hell bent on eating every last one of the socks in our drawers.  We would look at her like our family.

And now, sitting in the exam room at the veterinarian’s office, I’m looking at my family.  Penny’s my best friend. I know right where, on her ribcage, to rub to get her hind leg to start kicking like she’s peddling a bicycle. She thinks jumping into my groin when I walk in the house from work is what I look forward to. I know where the spot behind her ears that, when petted, will have her almost groaning with pleasure.  She knows I enjoy a rousing game of “fetch” with her.  She follows me around closer than my shadow.  So, as the doctor explains further the serious epidemic of Separation Anxiety that afflicts dogs nationwide and how Prozac has done wonders to help, I’m nodding in agreement with him like an idiot.

Separation Anxiety? Sure. Prozac? Uh huh.  How many milligrams did he say? Does this fall under my prescription plan?

I shook my head after a few minutes to clear away the haze of the Prozac suggestion and asked the doctor, “What can we do besides the Prozac? Is there a simpler solution to her anxiety? Therapy? Counseling? Keeping her in her crate when we leave?”

“Sure, you could leave her in her crate. There would be no problem with that.”

So we (read: me) decided against Prozac unless the veterinarian was going to be prescribing it for me.

I love my dog.  A lot.  Sometimes even more than my wife (the dog never asked me to empty the dishwasher once). We brought her home two years ago and in that time, she has become not just a part of our family, like some sort of footnote. She has become one of the family.  That being said, it took the vet, on the verge of scribbling a script for Prozac, for me to remember she is just a dog.  I think she’ll be just fine.

But if she isn’t fine…you better believe I’ll be getting a prescription for Prozac filled for her.

Our dog, Penny, is going to be turning 2 years old in human years (I am bound by the SPCA to mention ‘in human years’).  I’ve been trying to figure out just how old she is in dog years. Take the formula for converting Celsius into Farenheit divided by how much snow is equivalent to an inch of rain, subtract 3 and I think that’s how we get to it?  According to chacha.com, for every dog year, add 10.5 human years for the first 2 years.  Then you add 4 years for every dog year after that.  Why in the world dogs age like they live on Jupiter is beyond me. 

The point is, its my dog’s birthday.  For those of you with dogs, you know a party is in order. While I haven’t reached the point of renting out a hall and inviting all the dogs in the neighborhood to a party (I know some of you thought about doing that…you know who you are), I certainly have no qualms about treating my dog like another member of the family.

From the moment I knelt down in front of her and she launched herself on to my shoulders and licked my face like it had been made of hamburger meat, I knew she was our dog.  I took her to her new home on a Monday afternoon.  Not ten minutes in the door and she proceeded to urinate all over my carpet (not unlike my children when they were babies running around the house without a diaper on).  She was excited and nervous and anxious and hungry all in one. 

Since that first night in her new home Penny has gone through two belts, a few pairs of shoes, my Phillies hat, a half-dozen stuffed animals, a chunk of base trim along the wall, a pillow case, two dog beds, three of my tee shirts, and more socks than times Lindsay Lohan has been arrested.  She has been another mouth to feed.  Something else to take on Wellness visits to the doctors.  I’ve cleaned up after her.  Tried to get dog barf stains out of my carpet.  She has barreled over the kids in fits of excitement.  She is 80lbs and wants to be a lap dog (thank god my wife and I were done having kids…because we really are now).  She sheds so much my hardwood floors in the dining room look like we have a barber shop in our house.  She snores louder than I do.  She has terrorized the cat.  She is prone to snatching food out of your hand at the dining room table (it would be the same if you were on a boat with a fish in your hand near the water and a Great White Shark came to the surface).  She has a tail like a furry wrecking ball, sending picture frames, drinks, and flower vases flying.  But, she is always excited to see me (I know she’s a dog but all I did was walk out of the room for 11 seconds).  She lays at the end of our bed and keeps it warm.  I’ve seen her in attack position to protects my kids (sure sometimes she thinks she’s protecting them even from their grandfather…but she means well).  She is fantastic deterrent to anyone coming to my front door with a Bible, vacuum cleaner, or Chicken Barbecue ticket for sale.  If you scratch her in the right spot (right around the middle of her rib cage), her leg will start to kick.  I get along better with her than my wife on most days.  She lays next to me when I watch TV (she’s laying next to me now…and snoring).  When I talk to her, she cocks her head to the side as if to say, “I don’t know what you’re saying but I’m listening.  I really am. Can I have a bone?”.  She likes to put her head in your chest and rub her head around while you scratch behind her ears.  She makes  sort of grunting, sighing, jubilant groaning sound (I make the same one when my wife scratches the back of my neck). Like any best friend worth their fur, she is always right next to me.

No one in my house had to go through labor to get her here (or if we were Hollywood celebrities, no one had to shop for you and buy you in a third world country).   She didn’t have to marry in to the family.  We just bought her and brought her home (come to think of it, we were sort of like Hollywood celebrities). Because we wanted her to be apart of our family. And she is, now and forever.

So Happy 30th? 26th? 14th? 2nd?, I don’t know, I could never figure that dog years thing out, birthday to my Penny.