babies and puppies

okay, so, our 6 month old lhasa apso is in heat.

i discovered this last night at about 10pm while trying to desperately finish charting from the day yesterday....a day that can only be described as swamped.  first day back from vacation, plus i have a nurse practitioner student that is here on mondays.  so it was a little busy yesterday.

luckily, i am blessed to have the best hubs in the whole world.  got home yesterday, and he made dinner, went to the gas station and got me a diet mtn dew (which, is one of my vices and was the thing i gave up for Lent), wrangled the kids...in short, was just amazing.

seriously.  and on a side note, he and i have been having some wonderfully deep and meaningful conversations as of late about how dedicated we remain to our marriage.  and how we both want to strive to be a better spouse and parent every day....better every day than the last.  and i have to say that it's so incredibly refreshing to know that i really do have a partner in crime, someone to back me up, someone that would bail me out of jail, or hold my hair if i puked, or laugh with me over silly things, and to watch our children grow and learn.

anyway.

so, i was charting and discovered, sort of accidentally, that our dog is in heat.  it's her first heat, and i've never had a dog in heat before, so i convinced myself that i'm the worst pet owner EVER because i kept meaning to call the vet to get her spayed and everything else was so much more important.  and now she's going to get breast cancer and DIE all because i waited a week to call the vet and she started her heat cycle.

however, my Sister reassured me, since she is a registered vet tech and all, that i'm not the worst pet parent ever, nor is she going to die of breast cancer just because the dog is having one heat cycle.  thank G-O-D for my sister and the way she puts up with my high-maintenance-ness.

mkay, so on the way to drop piper off for school this morning, i was trying to explain to her that maizie (the dog) would have to stay in her crate mostly for the next week or so because she'll be all messy, and we can't let her run around the yard for awhile because we don't want her to have puppies.

hmm.  i wondered how do i explain this to a five year old.  so i tried in my best, self-assured voice to explain that just like grown up women can have babies, maizie is now a grown up dog and can have puppies.  and we have to keep any daddy dogs away from her so she doesn't have puppies.  and even though puppies are fun, they are a lot of work just like dade was a lot of work when he was a baby.  

"but what if she only has one puppy?  that wouldn't be so much work!"

well, sweetheart, it doesn't really work that way.

"well, why is she so messy?"

well, because that's the way God made it.  girl dogs and women, if they don't have puppies or babies, have some bleeding from where the puppies/babies come out.  and it's okay, it doesn't mean they're sick or hurting.  

"okay."

...

and that was that.  

it amazes me the way that children can be so black and white sometimes.  it's not that they're being mean, or derogatory, or anything else....they just want to know "why."  and whatever the answer is, it just is.

there's no judgment, no condescension....it's just the way it is and that is that.  

i think we could learn alot from our kids if we'd approach things that way....stop over-analyzing everything and just accept.  ask why, find out why, search for the answer to why, and when it's found, accept.  if it's never found, be the one that finds it.  and accept.