Sick day...

My husband is sick today. I told him two months ago to have a flu shot but he stubbornly declined citing some "immunity" breakdown effect that the flu shot induces. It is up to him, he is a grown man. Now he is a grown man groaning. Otto has laid in the bed with him the entire day, leaving only one time to zip outside, do his business, eat his dinner and then zip back into bed. They are watching television together.

Prior to Otto jumping in the bed, he puts up one paw to see where a foot or leg might be, then he jumps over or around with extreme precision. I think that there was an exact moment when he learned the "paw feeling" technique when as a puppy, he jumped up on the bed at warp speed and landed on something that no man ever wants to have anything land on....He is now a very courteous Anatolian Shepherd Dog.

The snow plow went by three times , no response from my house.. Usually that would cause an Anatolian eruption. The house is somber.

Sickness in the house makes me nervous. It makes me fragile. I don't like it when it is an animal or a person. One time when Otto was about 6 months old and enrolled in a puppy class, he got sick. It started off with a raspy cough which he promptly gave to our 8 year old black lab. Within two days, I thought they both were going to die, it was kennel cough combined with the plague. I didn't sleep for days, lying on the floor with both dogs, holding Otto's paw, which he hated but it made me feel better. The coughs passed after a full course of drugs, both dogs recovered and we never went back to that puppy class, I assumed he got some virus from drinking out of the commonly shared water bowl.

I think about Otto, how grateful I am to have him in my life. I hope he lives a long time and I hope my husband will feel better tomorrow. Sickness has a way of putting things in very proper prospective.