I'm going crazy with worry.  I can only imagine having a REAL kid!

I know what your're going through, Tom.  Pets are priceless and Betty is no exception !  It's hard to wait.  Hang in there !  We're all rootin' for Betty !

Edited for spelling.

Tom I hope Betty will be OK and Sebastian's ear clears up soon.

One night Bella started shaking , more so than usual, and felt very warm to the touch and had blood in her stool she started being completely listless at about 10 pm. We were going to take her to the vet in the morning but I just couldn't wait, I ran her to the 24 hour vet the next town over. She was in there over night and I just about went nuts with worry. I do love my kids in a different way, but no one can tell me, pets are not family members. Tom I think the amount of love and caring you have for Betty, shows what a wonderful loving heart you have.

Boy poor Betty has had her share of vet visits, she is due for some good health.

Awkward family get togethers? My family is pretty good about that and there's not ever much of a problem. One exception is that I don't really get along with my older brother and every now and then an issue comes up. He was the quarterback of the football team and I was one of the most outcast kids in school and every now and again people would tell stories or make fun of me for things that they could not have known unless my brother told them. Essentially I'm being made fun of already, and my big brother, instead of coming to my defence gives ammunition to my attackers. He wanted to be popular and part of that was distancing himself from his unpopular geeky brother. One time he even went so far as to tell people that we weren't brothers and the fact we had the same last name was just a coincidence. Not that anyone really believed him, we were the same height, build, color hair, similar facial features, same last name, but the fact he even tried that told me something about his personality and so I chose to distance myself from him.

He was having a house warming party and I was invited and told by my mom that I really should go, so I went. He had a few beers and he started telling stories about how lame I was as a kid, how I almost drowned in the ocean, how I was afraid to try new things, how I was always worried about being safe and how I would tag along behind him warning that we were going to get hurt or get in trouble. He had reversed our roles in his stories. He was the worried one, I was the reckless one, I was the explorer, he wanted to stay on the path, and the fact that he had taken that distinction and made it his own bothered me a lot. But the thing that bothered me the most was that his stories were well told. He had obviously told them dozens of times, perfecting ways to make himself look good at my expense. Again, I knew in school that he was doing things like that but I had never personally seen him do it. And it stunned me just how good it was, how convincing he made the pack of lies sound. The fact that was obvious to me was that he had come to believe them himself. I said my goodbyes and left and told my mom the next week that I was done. I was going to be polite, I wasn't going to make a scene, but I was done. There was no longer an olive branch to be extended.

We've been on polite terms ever since, but I really have no desire to be friends with him and if he starts telling stories again I'm just leaving. No explanations. No apologies, and no goodbyes.

Got Betty back home.  woohoo!

They flushed the cork out of her, we hope completely, though she has her last series of x-rays this morning.  There's some worry about it being caught in her secum (a little passage between small and large intestines).  There was one happy family last night snuggling in bed.  Why, I didn't even mind that paw in my face this morning at 4:45.

For the record, $945 bucks was the cost of finding out how much my dog meant to me.

Great to hear, Tom! Glad to hear Betty is back home and in good health.

And that's a steep vet bill! But you certainly did the right thing. Betty is lucky to have such a loving family.

Steve, I have a troubled relationship with my brother, too.  Sometimes, we'll have stretches of months where we get along fine, then he blows off my wedding with a lame excuse and we don't speak for years at a stretch. 

Better then, the brothers I CHOOSE to have: my best friend Marc (the Tampa Cop), my pal Steve (mtn biking bud), and my unofficial older brother Mike (also my bodybuilding coach, whose new leg workout I hate!).