4.29.2013

Dog tales and social media

See that fur baby over there? That's our Mollie, an 11 year old border collie/golden retriever mix (in need of a bath and serious haircut).

Anyway...Sunday night we noticed that she wasn't "herself"...she was moping around the house, laying in the corner away from everyone and panting uncontrollably. Since she IS 11 years old, we thought there might be a health problem going on.

I tried to sit next to her in the living room and rub her back and she was twitching as if she was in terrible pain. We couldn't get her to stand up and go outside and then we freaked out a bit. So, Kevin took Mollie to the emergency vet just so we could try to figure out what was going on.

Of course, they initially wanted to conduct about $700 worth of medical tests (NO way!) but ended up giving her a shot of pain medicine and something else to bring down her fever. (They also wanted to charge us $500 to keep her overnight hooked to an IV. Not gonna happen.)

Now, as this was happening I was freaking out just a bit. Mollie is our first fur baby and the thought that something REALLY SERIOUS might be wrong with her...well, I wasn't handling it very well. And so I took to Twitter and tweeted: "Crap. I think our 11 year old dog is really sick. She's very out of it tonight. I see a trip to the vet in the very near future."

Almost immediately some of my friends were sending me tweets asking what was going on and letting me know that they were thinking of me and Mollie. Instead of sitting on my couch crying and thinking the worst (of course), I spent the next hour talking with people on Twitter (and my mom via email and my sister via Facebook) .. and they made me feel better.

And this is one of the many, many reasons that I love Twitter. If you reach out and say you need good thoughts ... chances are, you're going to get them.

Monday, after a second vet visit and a diagnosis of a strained back leg (and an expected full recovery in about a week), I again took to Twitter and Facebook to give a "Mollie update." One of my friends had tweeted at me asking how Mollie was because she had been thinking of her. When I told her the good news she said: "I'm super happy that she is gonna be okay. I'm eating some meatloaf for her (it has onions but we will pretend it doesn't)!"

And if that isn't awesome, I don't know what is. 

So, I really want to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who tweeted at me and left comments on my Facebook page. Your thoughtfulness and your pixie dusted good thoughts are very appreciated and it's actions like these that make me so happy that social media exists.

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