My Life | Becky Bean Writes

I keep wanting to blog about the clinic, and I want to get it all out while it’s still fresh in my head.

Needless to say, I had the world’s most incredible time… and in addition to having the time of my life, I learned so much my brain hurt. In some areas of how I approach horses I experienced a completely revolutionary shift in thinking… which was both weird and awesome.

I have a ton of pictures to go through – I’m only about halfway through going through them, and I have over 50 “favorites”.

I even took a bunch of notes on the long drive home, so I know exactly what I want to write about.

And then I woke up on Tuesday, physically exhausted but happy and ready to write….

And a freak accident occurred, and we lost our kitten Bubbles.

Even though he was still young, he was just an AWESOME cat. He was one of those one-in-a-million cats.

I mean, we drove him to the DragonMonkey’s preschool for show and tell and handed him around to twenty different preschoolers, and he never even complained, or tried to wriggle away.

That’s a pretty awesome cat.

On the one hand I’m just incredibly sad, although I’m not as devastated as I could be… mainly because when I lost my best friend (also another incredible cat) when I was in my early 20s, I spent about three months just going through the motions of life, feeling like I had a hole where my heart used to be…. and I realized how ridiculous that was.

Our pets do not live as long as we do. We live 80 years. They live about 15 years.

I knew I couldn’t survive having my heart destroyed every 10 or 15 years, and I made a conscious decision to not lose myself completely in any of my pets again, at least not the shorter lived ones. Oh, I still love them passionately, but I just don’t let myself completely go with them. In the back of my mind I realize I’m going to outlive them.

Hey, maybe that’s not the healthiest way to approach it, but it’s what I had to do to keep myself from flinging myself off a bridge if I ever lost another pet.

Which I guess is why it surprised me that it hurt so much when Bubbles passed.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised – he was an incredible little cat, and I bottle fed him from the time he was about 5 days old. Once they were old enough his sister found a home with my very good friend here in town, and we kept him.

So, anyways, before I go on and post anything about the clinic, I just need to take a moment to say goodbye. I kept trying to just keep it to myself, because I didn’t feel like writing about it, but the sadness was seeping into my clinic posts, so I realized I needed to do this.

Miss you, Bubbles. You really were the best of kitties. I’ll see you again someday.

I don’t usually do fancy stuff like “click here for a bunch of photos after the jump” or anything, but I figured it’s worth warning everyone.

This blogpost is less “lots of words about something funny”and more “here are lots of semi-blurry photos of my dog”.

Sorry. It’s the best I can do with my life right now. I did mention I have poison oak on my hoohah…. but did I mention that it migrated?

I thought poison oak of the vajayjay was bad.

It turns out that poison oak of the butt crack is even worse.

YEAAAAH.

Also, I know everyone is just sooooo turned on at the mental image of me with butt crack poison oak, but sorry, I’m already married. What can I say? You snooze, you lose.

Oh, did I forget to mention that patches of the poison oak became infected, and I developed cellulitis?

It’s okay. I know you’re disappointed, but not everyone can be me.

Anyways, here’s a bunch of photos of Artemis playing fetch to scrub that mental image from your brain.

Lots more photos after this pic:

I love playing fetch with Artemis.

I know all labs love to play fetch, but her intensity is amazing.

Although she’s still completely obnoxious for the first five minutes after she meets new people, for the most part she’s one of the most laid back dogs I’ve ever owned.

I find that pretty amazing, considering she’s still only 10 months old.

The thing is, she’s only laid back until you ask her to retrieve.

Then she’s all business.

(If you stare at this picture long enough, after awhile she doesn’t even look like a mammal.)

(This one’s not much better.)

As soon as she gets the ball in her mouth all of that I’m-a–wolf-about-to-pounce-for-the-kill body language shuts off and she reverts back into her normal, happy-go-lucky self.

She charges so hard after the ball (or bumper, or toy, or whatever I ask her to retrieve) that even though she loves it I try not to let her retrieve more than about two times a week. She’s still a growing puppy, and while I haven’t read any literature supporting my instinct, I figure it’s like any growing thing – you really don’t want to stress their joints too hard.

Besides, if I throw it, she will absolutely give everything she has to get the item back to me, no matter how far or how buried in the brush or how deep in the water it is. I feel like I need to take this borderline god-like responsibility seriously.

The best part about our fetch sessions it is how much the boys enjoy playing with her. I’m all for activities that tire all three of them out.