Sick as a Dog...

I love hearing stories about where commonly-used idioms originated.

I remember reading about the idiom, "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" -- it came from Mideival times when the entire family bathed in one tub of water. Typically the father would go first and then everyone else would have a turn. By the time the youngest family members stepped up to the tub, the water was very dirty. Since babies were typically the last to bathe, people of the day warned not to mistakenly dump the baby just because you couldn't see it in the murky water.

Well, this week I had the chance to see first-hand where the phrase, "sick as a dog" comes from. My dog Bella was spayed last Thursday and was supposed to spend some of the weekend recovering. She was pretty lethargic most of Friday, but by Saturday she was making a comeback.

Unfortunately, this comeback did not last long. Bella began to have difficulty with her digestive tract (for the Michigan fans out there, she had the runs) and she quickly lost energy. By Monday afternoon, she was so sick that she could not even move her back legs. She would lay there and whimper, I would pick her up and take her outside, she would poopandpee, and I would have to carry her back in. We were so sure that she was knocking on death's door that we took her to the emergency veterinary hospital that night.

The idiot vet there tried to get us to spend money for every test under the sun, and ended up getting about $400 out of our bank account before we were done (yes, the healthcare crisis extends even into dogdom). Basically, she got x-rays done, was given pain medication, and she was given fluid under her skin. That was an odd sight actually -- since dog skin is so loose, they inject fluids under the skin on the back. She came out looking like Quasimodo. She had a half-volleyball-sized hump on her back and a softball-sized hump on her neck. The liquid was so cool that her skin was cold to the touch. But I digress.

We took Bella home that night and she didn't improve in the least. My sister-in-law Heather came to watch her the next day and was freaked out that our typically energetic dog did nothing but lay there in pain. The only things she moved on Moday were her eyes. That afternoon, we finally carried poor parapeligic Bella in to see our real vet. I was ready to hear that we were going to have to put her to sleep.

She had gas. That's right, gas. This dog was laying around my house for days as if she were two breaths away from a horrible, grisly death -- all because she needed to let out a big kapoot. To be fair, she did have a LOT of gas in her system, so I can understand the discomfort, just not the on-death's-doorstep routine. I guess there is no middle-ground with sick dogs.

So next time you try to combine chili with buffalo wings and birthday cake, make sure you refer to your own pain by saying, "Man! I am sick as a dog!"