The Vet and the Benedictine Nun

May is the month when Levi gets his yearly appointment with the vet for blood work and the vaccines required for getting the county license tags. Recently they’ve changed the law so licenses and rabies boosters are due every three years now so technically going every year to the vet is no longer necessary, but life-long habits are hard to break. My lifetime, not his. According to the paperwork Levi the Mighty Schnauzer was “ten years, three months and two weeks” old on the day of the appointment but before we got out of there I think we both felt liked we’d aged a month and in dog years, that’s a lot.

The place I take him is an animal hospital with 4-5 vets on duty and on appointment day they had a dog come in that had been hit by a car and all their other patients got backed up in the waiting room. Pooping dogs and peeing puppies and other canines like Levi biting at the bit wanting to play with the cats in cages and the other dogs on leashes. It was a manic zoo. Finally we got into an exam room and when the vet walked in he started the conversation with, “I need to tell you that I might get called out during Levi’s exam. There’s a couple next door with a cat that is getting put down and when they are finished saying their goodbyes and are ready for me to start the process, I’ll be called out.” Been there, done that with this very veterinarian so I understood and said appropriate words about that being hard on everyone. Then I started puckering up. I could feel tears coming and I didn’t even know the damn cat in the next room! I kept it together but it wasn’t easy, especially when the vet got the tap on the door and the whispered words came next, “They're ready now.” Who is ever really ready for that?

The in-and-out in 15 minutes appointment took an hour and a half and for once Levi’s teeth looked good but he’s still getting them cleaned later this summer. His heart and lungs sounded good and the vet couldn’t find anything wrong with Levi’s knee joints and I’ve been worried about them. The next day I got the other test results by phone. His canine CBC chem 11 levels were in normal ranges. Except they say he’s got Lyme disease and he needs another blood test and possibly treatment! I was so shocked I asked them to double check to see if they were reading the right dog’s blood work. He takes all the precaution drugs for ticks, fleas and heart worms and I’ve never seen a tick on him. I’d already paid $224.55 and they wanted another $69.50 for a new test to put a finer point on the Lyme situation. What are you going to do, say no? I did say no to a suggestion that I should also bring in a urine sample to see if the Lyme disease has damaged his kidneys. More accurately, I said, “Let’s see what this new test says first.” And for anyone wondering how you get a urine sample from a dog, you follow him or her around with a pie pan and stick it underneath at the right time, hoping you get your hand out of the way in time. The things we do for love.

I was not in a good mood after the phone conversation with the vet tech and when I clicked the phone off I looked up and saw two mourning doves mating on my deck railing. “Get a room!” I yelled. I wasn’t sure they’d be back this year---I quit putting birdseed out near-by to discourage mice in the basement---but apparently old habits are hard to break in the bird world too. They’ve been hanging out on that railing and building a spring nest in a near-by pine tree for years. I won’t be able to use my living room door out to the deck for a couple of weeks without scaring the doves and they, in turn, scaring me as they fly out of the tree.

The next day I went to Book Club and managed to show up at the right time. Every so often we’ll change from our normal 1:00 to 12:00 and I'll get there as the book discussion is ending instead of beginning. Not this time. The book we’ll be reading for June is My Mrs. Brown, but I won’t start it until I finish a self-published book on my Kindle, written by a new blogger friend, Dee Ready. I knew from reading her blog, Coming Home to Myself, that she’s an excellent writer and the topic of her book intrigued me enough to finally download a copy from Amazon after two weeks of indecision. Prayer Wasn’t Enough is about Dee's years spent as a Benedictine nun in the late 1950s and '60s but given the fact that I call myself an agnostic I wasn’t sure how I’d relate to the subject.

I’ve read 75% of the book and I’m still fascinated by the details Dee shared about living in a strict convent---the clothing and its care, the steps and vows required, the daily routines and prayer schedules, the traditions of the order, the image of hundreds of nuns living all in one place, and, of course, the self-discovery she went through as she struggled for self-imposed perfection. I’m not at the point in the memoir where she leaves that life behind but already I know I'll read the book Dee hopes to publish next covering her ten years after leaving the convent. We’ve all gone through transitions in life---some bigger and scarier than others---but not many of us can say that we’ve been a devoted nun in a former life and certainly not a nun given a name like Sister Innocence. ©