Three is the new four

Payton, my recently injured Whippet, is learning to hobble around on three legs with her fourth dragging. The orthopedic surgeon had good things to say about Payton's chances for a partial, if not full, recovery, but it's going to take time. And that's TIME, as in months and months. And maybe some more months. For the next four weeks, we have to keep her quiet, and not allow her to jump off or on the furniture. That feat seems impossible for a dog that's one quarter paralyzed, but before the vet said to restrict her activities, she had already done this several times. So now my sofa has exercise pen "bed rails" and the Wonder Whippet gets lifted on and off when necessary. She thinks this whole arrangement is shitty. I agree.

I also appreciate the way it makes my family room more white trashy. It goes well with the fact that, due to our current house painting situation, all the stuff that belongs on my back porch is stacked in various places in our yard. It looks great next to the agility equipment. But I digress.

Since the original incident happened in the middle of the night, I had traveled to the emergency vet and back while my kids were still sleeping. When they got up, not very long after I fell back asleep, I told them what happened. The Boy had this to say, and he came up with it just about as quickly as it takes to read it:

Boy: Wow! Poor Payton! But really, there are good things and bad things about this.


Me: Really?


Boy: Yes. Because, you know, it's bad, but on the other hand, she won't be stealing our food for a while. And that's good.

And he's totally right. I can't tell you how fantastic it has been to not have to sequester every food item behind a closed door or jammed in the microwave. Since she's been disabled, my purse hasn't been ransacked, and all the cookies I baked are still in the cookie container on the counter. Does it make up for the difficulty of carrying her around and holding her up when she poops? I'm not sure. But I still have all my cookies.

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Although this catastrophic canine injury had the potential to be expensive, it's oddly been pretty affordable. This is good because of all the money we haven't got. I just recently heard about Mission Tuition, which is a way to save for your children's college education while purchasing stuff you would normally buy online. I was impressed to see that they have so many participating merchants, although I was kind of surprised to learn that people shop online at places like Home Depot. For me, Home Depot is a store that you go to when you've completely mucked something up and need to fix it RIGHT NOW. I guess other people actually plan home improvements and order supplies in advance. I wonder what that's like?

Anyway, you can save for college using Mission Tuition through a 529 plan, which I've read about and might kind of understand. If you have kids and your college tuition savings plan is, like mine, "You better get a scholarship," you might want to check this out.