Addendum, or, The Amazing Aventures of Monkey-Face Dog

Well, apparently the vet finally found the perfect pharmacological cocktail, because Nelly is practically break-dancing around the house. No sign of post-anesthesia psychosis. She's resting comfortably, having just snapped a tasty bug snack out of the air with lightning-quick reflexes.

As I was checking her out, the vet assistant said, "Your dog..." [I cringed, at the ominous tone...what had she done? gnawed on another dog? eaten a cat?]..."your dog...was unbearably cute when she came out from anesthesia. Nelly is a very sweet girl."

I sighed. "Yeah," I said, "she does that."

When Nelly was two, she was hit by a car, and was critically injured. She had a tear in her lung, internal bleeding, and a gash on her head. When Enrico left her at the emergency vet, they basically told him not to hold out too much hope. The next morning, we had to transport her to the critical care hospital, driving her across town in time for them to tap her chest before the tear in her lungs would fill her chest with air, suffocating her to death in my arms in the car.

That morning when we picked her up at the emergency clinic, the vet listed everything that was wrong with her. She told us she'd done some extra x-rays for her own peace of mind, at at no cost to us. "Clinically, I should be giving you a very somber prognosis, given her condition." she said. "But somehow, my gut is telling me she won't die. I mean...well, look at her!"

They brought her out. She was shaved all over, her breathing was labored, and her head was stapled together like Frankendog. But she was wagging her tail and her eyes were bright. Broken and in great pain, she had that spunky look. The look that we now refer to as her Inner Bad-Ass.

And when they gave us her chart to take on to the next vet, with its detailed and jargon-filled narrative of her care throughout the night, we saw that amidst the vital statistics and medication dosages, amidst documented efforts to stabilize her tattered lungs and stop her bleeding - was this sentence, tossed in every now and then: "Very sweet girl!"

So we laugh that she has been clinically, officially diagnosed as a Very Sweet Girl. When I'm at my wit's end about her neuroses and obsessive habits, when she seems like such a fragile little diva, I remember that fierce inner bad-ass, determined to live against the odds, and to look damn cute doing it.