Elmer

Inu gets lots of nods on our blog. Which makes total sense. She has the looks and personality. She is young, vivacious, and bad. Micah and I got her together and have had her since she was a puppy. Inu is our quintessential first dog. We plan on having her forever and comparing every other animal we have to her. When we lost her for 15 hours, we cried for at least 6 of those hours. Micah sobbed harder than I had ever seen him do so in our relationship.

But we do have another dog. Elmer. Elmer is ours by default. Though, we did change his last name from Shepherd to Bell, so it is not in location only that he can be called "ours."

I decided to get a dog one afternoon while sitting at the hospital waiting for my brother to get out of brain surgery (true story, he had a tennis ball sized tumor in his brain). Looking at dogs online from the Humane Society of Indianapolis was both therapeutic and entertaining. There were several dogs I was interested in being that I was looking very specifically for a dog that was not a puppy and not huge given my apartment living status.

Elmer was not one of those dogs. I don't even remember seeing his profile on the HSI website.

A few days after the surgery (which went very well and gave my brother a titanium skull), I meandered into the humane society and started to look at the small dogs (any dog under 35 pounds). I didn't feel any particular connection to a specific dog, but while walking by the first kennel the volunteer said, "If I had room for another dog, I would take Elmer home." She then proceeded to tell me that he had been at the shelter for over 3 months and that he was going to be euthenized to make room for all the animals coming in from Hurricane Katrina.

This made me feel terrible. I desperately wanted a dog, thought this dog was ugly and smelled kinda bad, but didn't want him to be put to sleep. So after a few visits outside with him, I said I'd take him.

I should have known there was more to the story when the check out girl told me in adopting Elmer I was never, ever allowed to bring him back. Never.




Elmer was deathly afraid of storms, the oven, and cameras. Afraid to the point that he ripped up 500 square feet of carpet in the apartment, chewed through a garbage disposal cable, burrowed under the sink and dug a hole in the back of the cabinet, and dug a hole in my roommate's (Heidi) mattress. After these incidents, he was put on Xanax-the same medicine I was taking for anxiety at the time.

When we Heidi and I tried to crate train him, he destroyed 2 metal and 1 iron crate. He ripped out all of his toenails digging out of the crate.

He also has the most annoying bark in the world.

He would run away and scare the neighbors-seriously, we would hear them scream whenever he got out of the house.

He never got on furniture-unless we weren't home. Then he would sleep on the back cushion of the couch. The cushions never returned to their original shape.



Last night I came home to a disaster. Elmer had vomited and had diarrhea all over the living room and kitchen. Plus there was a huge puddle of blood in the kitchen.

Ever since Micah and I got married, Elmer would get sick every 6 weeks or so. He would refuse to eat or drink for 4 or 5 days and throw up/have diarrhea every couple hours. Usually by the time we would decide to take him in to the vet, his illness would magically lift.

But this bought has been different. And Micah and I have had several conversations about how far do we go to save him...how much do we spend...ethically, what would God desire us to do to care for His creation as a whole...we committed to caring for Elmer, what does this look like with children?

Last night I was certain that it was going to be our last night with Elmer. I cried and cried and cried. Micah came home, cleaned up the mess, and we went to the pet hospital. On the way, we agreed to cap our spending.

The initial estimate to just see what is wrong with Elmer was almost $800. Way above our cap. The second estimate was right under the cap, so we took it and brought him home.

I stayed home from work today (2 weeks before the big school program) to monitor Elmer. I just fed him homemade rice and chicken-he loved it. He will be getting a bath this afternoon. We should find out the test results today or tomorrow.

I never really thought I liked Elmer all that much. To put it bluntly, he is kind of a pain in the ass most of the time.

Last night, when we went back to pick him up from the hospital after running to the store, he trotted right into our waiting room, looked at Micah and smiled.




Soon to come: Elmer's greatest hits