Dr. Dolittle

Phew. I’m back. Been a rough few days and sleepless nights listening to the psuedo hacking of one Raimi Boy. We hit the vet yesterday and he’s now on antibiotic pills that are the size of the tip of my baby finger - and I'm not kidding. I have to cut them in half to hide them in his food otherwise even fluff brain Boy would spot the bright neon orange signs sticking out of his dish.

I did a little research on that most dangerous of tools: Google. Everyone was bandying about the ‘kennel cough’ diagnosis but I’m not quite buying it. All the descriptions I can find tell me that Bordetella is ‘dry’ and ‘hacking’. Raimi is doing neither. He’s snotting and huffing. Seems like a plain ol’ regular cold. Maybe that’s what kennel cough is – I hear tell that Bordetella is not one specific infection but a concoction of several so who knows. Either way we’re hitting it with antibiotics called Cephali-something-medical-sounding for the next week.

We’re avoiding the park to prevent a lot of the huffing that ensues when he exerts himself. I guess we’ll be doing an evening constitutional around the block so the bright orange baby finger sized pills have a chance to work their magic. I’m not sure that he’s contagious and for the most part he doesn’t have any symptoms until something catches in his throat and it sets off a paroxysm of huffing and snorting.

I feel very bad for him. It's not his fault. The sad wrinkles and worry eyes are out a lot these days. I tell him we are working on fixing it so he can sleep better and go back to the park. He just looks at me and goes ‘huff.”