Today was one of those afternoons that we were starving and our old stand bye dinner wasn’t going to cut it, so Miles slammed a banana while I threw my hair in a pony and we headed off to Pizza Hut. We had nice comfy dinner and Miles amazed us with his tape recorder skills of repeating words we say. Via the salad bar he now knows the words, “beet” and “egg.” Pizza Hut has also learned to close the salad bar when they see Miles approaching. I do believe they lost money tonight as their $1.35 or something they charge for kids was well under what he either ate or threw on the floor. He also entertained us with Jello before we headed home. (Please refer to my last post for his latest party trick.)

It was such a beautiful night that when we got home that we decided to go for a walk before we gave Miles his bath. I started to feed the dogs while John put Miles in the stroller out in the garage and Stamp, who usually devours her food in one swoop was just standing there looking at her bowl. I did a double take and I then saw that Stamp appeared to not be able to move her legs. She was acting really funny and I knew that something was wrong. So I ran out to the garage, told John to check out Stamp because I thought she was having a seizure. (Don’t ask me why I passed the buck on to John at this point. Poor guy.) I was getting Miles out of his stroller and I could hear John yell (in a really scared voice that I have never heard before) and I could hear Stamp making this horrible noise. I went into the kitchen and Stamp was laying on her side having the worst seizure ever in a puddle of urine. I’ll save you the details. John looked horrified as he held her.

It was so horrible. John was so afraid and so was I. (Feel free to think I’m a drama queen at this point, but we LOVE our dogs so I kind of went a little nuts at this point.) I popped Miles in his crib with a toy and ran downstairs. In my head I figured I would need to get someone to watch Miles while we took our convulsing dog to the vet so I run next door to ring my neighbor’s doorbell. (Mind you, my neighborhood is pretty hands off.) Realizing I might be asking a lot of my neighbor who doesn’t have kids, I run across the street to some ladies I know and who are nurses. Before I get to their doorbell I’m starting to come to my senses as I realize it’s nuts to just leave my baby at bedtime with a neighbor, but by then I had really brought some attention to myself. People who were walking by started to ask if we were ok and somebody even stopped their van to see if we were ok. Ok, I’m realizing that I”m fully nuts, but John was just as freaked out as I was. He, by now, has Stamp wrapped up in a towel and her seizure has stopped but she looked all zoned out and weird. My neighbor was going to ride with John, but after I tucked him in the car with a swaddled Stamp, he was on his way to the pet hospital by himself.

Oh, and my neighbor, who I had gotten involved in our little pet crisis, just lost her dear dog (her dog was like her only child) a matter of months ago so she looked like she was about to cry. I felt SO bad that I was such a freak and got her all riled up. I lost my first husband to cancer and I have been through some pretty horrendous stuff and handled it with a pretty cool head, so I really should be able to handle my dog having a seizure, but for both John and I, we just felt so panicky.

So John just called me and the vet said it was a grand mal seizure. It could be epilepsy, Pug Dog Encephalitis or just a fluke. Depending on what happens in the future will tell us what it was. He said sometimes dogs have a random seizure and they never happen again. I won’t go into details about the other reasons for seizures, because we are really hoping it’s just a fluke. Whisper has had little seizures in the past where she couldn’t walk that we have had extensively checked out, but they were very minor compared to the scary one Stamp had today.

So that’s been our night. Miles was awesome and played with his stacking toy in the crib while we had our little freak out. His little nightly swim meet in the bathtub kept my mind off John and Stamp at the vet. (He seriously does this crazy backstroke in the bathtub every time. It drenches who ever is giving him a bath.) He went right to bed as it was past his bed time anyway. So it has just been Whisper and I cuddling up with the lap top as we await Stamp’s return.

Ok, so feel free to think I’m nuts. You all know we love our little guy Miles more than words can explain, but Whisper and Stamp are who really prepared us to take care of another living thing. I got these dogs with Andy, my late husband and when John came along, they were like my children that John accepted and love as his own. We had them in our wedding not because it was something cute to do, but because we felt like we were blending two families. Like I said, it all probably seems very dramatic, but they mean so much to us. John and I feel things deeply and put a lot of meaning into what we do, so it makes sense that we have dogs in our life that are like blood family.

Stamp is now back home and she still seems disoriented and jittery. Our wallet is a few hundred bucks lighter, but I did get to know my neighbor better. After a conversation on the phone and mutual understanding of canine medical emergency situations, we know we are both kindred spirits and will have each other’s backs in time of need.

So as Stamp recovers from her fluke seizure and John and I take a big breath, I thought I would share some of my favorite pug pics.

(Stamp is the one on the bottom. Yes, we can tell them apart.)

When Bobbi+Mike photographed us this past fall (Miles was 7 months old, here’s the link to the post on us.) they captured us in action with our pugs. Here are some out-takes where Stamp was trying to make her way into the shots.

Ok, now that you all know how nuts we are about our dogs, I’ll wrap this up. I couldn’t resist throwing one more of cutie Miles from that shoot!!! (ok, more like 4 more.)

Yes, Miles could read at 7 months. He’s a genius baby. ;-D

Ok, I’m shushing! If you are still reading this (Hi mom!) bless you and bless your amazing attention span. All the sweet babies in my house are all sleeping peacefully and I think I’m going to go do the same. Nighty night!!!