Conehead

It's all over now, all fine, but for a week or so we had a conehead. The night before his surgery, I didn't know that neutering was what it was... I was expecting a more human-like vasectomy, but we found photos online and realized that "extirpating" the testicles was what awaited him the next morning. (It was a very good idea by the way, and he doesn't even know what he lost, he doesn't seem sad or even interested in what once was there...no seriously, I'm not just rationalizing!) He trotted into the vet's office and watched his leash pass into the hands of a nurse and he trotted off with her at the same pace, totally excited at what treasure awaited him through that door. Needless to say, his dad couldn't help but feel a little sick.

When we took him from the vet that morning, though, we tried to keep from laughing at him from above his cone (or behind his back) because he walked and moved just like his old happy self, except the cone hid his entire head so that our big beautiful dog was attached to a satellite dish that swayed and sashayed with the bounce of his basset steps. It dragged on the cement and picked up dirt and pushed down the grass. And to add a bit more insult, it was tied around his neck by a soft white satin little ribbon in a bow. Once inside, his cone regularly got stuck on a shelf as he passed by or against a doorjamb below him, and he stopped dead in his tracks. Unable to see the obstacle but feeling its pressure against him, he froze like Robert Deniro near the end of the movie Awakenings, and likewise, if you gave him a push, he just continued on his projected way. Conehead would greet me when I came home from work at 2am with a thud and a whack down the hallway, scraping the walls as he turned to follow me, and giving a full-plastic shake as he tried to wake up a bit. The cats just thought he was a semi-truck barreling down at them and ran away from him, which made him run even faster after them as his cone whacked everything along the way.

But, after just five days...