Convalescing and Chickenfarts

Maggie is a very loyal dog. She's been a good (if slightly flatulent) friend to the family for the 12+years since she came to live with us.

She's spent most of the week at my side in the bedroom. When I get up and crutch around her, she watches me most carefully.

I prefer to believe it's because she's concerned about my safety, and not because she's heard the old joke so many times that she's taken it to heart.
Oh.
What old joke, you ask?
This old joke.

Q. How do you know you're fat?
A. You know you're fat when you step on your dog's tail and it dies.

I mentioned a case of Maggie chickenfarts in a post a month or so ago, and in case you've been wondering, she really doesn't smell a lot better in June than she did in May.

(I know the majority of you have spent an inordinate amount of time wondering about that very thing. My god. Have you nothing better to do?)

What's funny is, she used to fart and jump up and leave the vicinity. Because of the way she's been disoriented the last month or so, she no longer jumps up and pretends she has urgent business at the other end of the house because she gets lost on her way through the kitchen in eight out of 10 attempts.

Instead, she looks innocently at me, usually thumping her tail agreeably on the floor... but from the appreciative way she's sniffing the air you'd think someone had sprayed Essence de Roast Beef in a big cloud around her.

I know it's disgusting, but she likes it.

(In a related story, when my baby brother Steve was about four years old, he asked me, "Why do other people's farts stink and mine smell good?")

Sorry, Maggie. That isn't roast beef you're smellin'.

If I say something to her... ohmygod what is that SMELL?? She gets all offended and snorts at me and gets up and leaves the room for a moment. She wanders as far as her water bowl (I was just getting up to get a drink anyway) and comes back into the bedroom and flops down next to the bed again.

She is VERY insulted when I light a match to mask the odor.

In case you were worrying about the potential hazard of a methane explosion, I think the danger of blowing us all up is fairly small.

However, on occasion the smell coming from the dog is so obnoxious and so offensive that I sometimes wait a minute before striking a spark... just in case.

The cause of the disoriented wacky thing that she's been doing for a few weeks may have been figured out, though. One of my friends from the homeschool chat asked if I'd researched Vestibular Disease in dogs.

I hadn't.

But it sounds like that's what's going on with her. And that there's not a whole lot we can do at this point.

In knee news, I took off the bandages last night, all the way down to the incisions. Two tiny little slices that probably won't even leave a scar, not that it matters. I will wear a bandage and padding while I'm sleeping, I think, but I'm doing great.

I can walk some without crutches, too, but I'm taking it easy and slow.