… I have posts queued up and half written in my head, but my little dog Meeka has derailed me from feeling like gushing about awesome places to have dinner and drinks and shopping in new neighborhoods. Meeka went to the emergency vet last night due to being in pain and her hind legs being unstable; it looks like the Dachshund disc curse has caught up with her.

When I first got Meeka, I was paranoid that she would have back problems. I can even remember having a conversation with Thom before we got her in which I was afraid to add Dachshunds to the list of dogs to consider due to the possibility of back problems. But, after weeks of calling every shelter and Pet Finder ad about dogs under 30 lbs and failing to secure one, I decided to buy a puppy… after calling every classified ad we could find in Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee the weekend Thom was on leave, Meeka lead the Dachshund breed to victory by not being already sold. (Probably due to the fact that another dog had bit her in the face and it looked a little nasty.)

Meeka is eight now, and I’d stopped worrying about what would happen if her back went out… until yesterday morning I noticed her moving slowly, and maybe limping slightly. I thought she had maybe stepped on something, or just pulled a muscle or something, and later she got excited and sped up again, so I thought she was fine. I realized she wasn’t later in the day when she cried at the bottom of the stairs instead of coming up them. We brought her in to the emergency vet later after noticing her back legs seemed a little unstable, yet free of visible injury.

She’s on steroids and painkillers and cage rest now waiting to find out what course of action our regular vet recommends. I’m hoping she can avoid surgery, since she is a bit older and it seems pretty traumatic. Meeka currently insists that there’s nothing wrong with her and she should be able to get out of her cage and play. Since she hasn’t lost the ability to walk, and can still flip her feet back over if you flip them the wrong way, suppose ably things are pretty hopeful.  We’ve been reading some on Dodger’s List and other sites on Dachshund back issues, and it seems like the prognosis isn’t necessarily as horrible as I had previously thought.

Now that Meeka’s life has flashed before my eyes, I realize how long we’ve have had her. We had her before film cameras were entirely extinct. I’ve had her through five addresses.. an estimated 11 haircolors.. since before the smartphone revolution.

And for good measure, here is one of the first blog posts I ever wrote, from my Myspace page about Meeka, during our first year or so.

Meeka’s Mission in Life

Since there is apparently one person in the world who cares what I babble about, I decided to think of something to scribble about…  strictly for the amusement of Laura….  So I am going to tell you about Meeka, a selfish dog who wants me to stop playing with the computer so she can better annoy me.

Meeka is a wiener dog, a little, black, two hundred dollar wiener dog.  That is somewhere around 22$ a pound for the record.  Except that when we got her it was probably more like 100 per pound.  Anyway, Thom was here on leave for a few days, and we had decided that we were going to get the puppy while he was here, so we called all over four states trying to find a mini dachshund, a chihuahua, or a min pin for under 300.  From Kentucky to Tennessee, to Missouri, and all the way up to around Champaign, no body had any left.  “we just sold the last one,” they kept saying.  We finally found her, near Effingham, and she was the last one, and she had been bitten in the face by another dog, and they were really going to wait to sell her until she was better, but we wanted her anyway.  And we got her at a cut rate because her face was cut.  We put magic horse wound cream on it, and it was healed really fast. (Dont worry, the directions say you can use it on dogs, just not to eat the dog afterwards)  We named her Meeka, roughly after the girl in Eurotrip, but Thom thought it was cuter spelled with English phonetics. So that is where Meeka came from.  That was about a year ago.

Meeka is big now, or about as big as she is going to get, and she has aparently been sent by God to do all the things to me that i used to do to Thom that were annoying. Here is a partial list:

– Trying to snuggle with me while I am doing something.  She sees that I have homework or something laid out, and jumps right into the middle of it to try to sidle up to me.  I used to do this to Thom.  He would be doing something and I would come sit up against him and try to get him to pay attention to me.

– Following me unnessesarily.  Yeah, I used to follow Thom around, if he would leave the room I would generally follow him if unoccupied.  I just liked him okay.   However, Meeka tries to follow me into the bathroom, which I did not do to Thom.

-Talking while I am trying to sleep.  I used to do that all the time, Thom would want to sleep but I would be talking to him.  He was nicer to me than I am to Meeka though, he would really try to stay awake, and say “Im really sorry baby.. Im just so tired…” everytime he dozed off.  Meeka barks, and I say “Shut up Meeka! No one wants to hear your mouth!”

– Bothering me while I am on the phone.  I answer the phone, she starts pretending to bark and growl at something.  I didnt bark and growl while Thom was on the phone, I would just ask who it was, ect.  Meeka is definitely more annoying in this respect than me.

– Trying to sleep on top of me.  She doesn’t get to do it any more, because I put her in her cage at night now because other wise she is bad.  But she would always want to sleep on top of me, and she would fidget all the time.  I used to try to sleep right up next to Thom, and for a long time, he would not be able to sleep that close to me.

– Kissing me at inconvenient times.  I don’t like her to kiss me at all, and she always wants to do it when I am busy.  Like when I have my hands full, she tries to kiss my hands.  I used to always try to kiss Thom while he was doing stuff.  He never acted annoyed really, but now I see how that could be real annoying.

So anyway, you are probably wondering why I like such an annoying dog.  I have my reasons.  But perhaps the real question is why Thom likes me….