On Tuesday, Charlie got neutered. This is actually not that common a procedure in Germany, where they prefer to leave animals “au naturel” (and the Vet tells me that it’s actually illegal in Sweden… and yet, strangely enough, 4 out of 5 of the male dogs in Charlie’s pack are neutered). Charlie, although not at all aggressive, was very dominant and had the bad habit of having to hump everything and everyone. This is not at all funny when there is a 110 pound dog hanging on to your waist, or even worse, pinning a ten year old boy to the ground. Charlie is officially known by the Vet as Charlie Geyer (my last name), so my dog walkin’ buddies made the joke that now he’s Charlie G. because die Eier sind weg (“Eier” is the German word for testicles).
Because of a reaction to the anesthesia, poor Charlie was barfing everywhere Tuesday night. It almost broke our hearts, but we had to lock him in the tiled hallway all night to save our carpets. He’s feeling better now though and isn’t hobbling around with his back legs spread as far apart as possible anymore. Saturday he gets his stitches out and we will immediately after be giving him a bath because unfortunately, he smells like puke.
Haha. Someone just called and I saw the number was 0160-something and the only person who ever calls me from an 0160-something number is Lynn (my Canadian bud in Potsdam), so I greeted the caller with a loud, “Hey there!” It turned out to be an older Bavarian gentleman calling to tell us about a house in Regensburg. I thanked him for calling and explained that we already found one. See, we put an ad in the newspaper two weeks ago saying that we were looking for a place and that ad is still up on the newspaper’s Internet site. Oh, and in case you don’t read the comments, we picked the apartment with a big garden in Laaber. But we’ve decided to only do necessary renovations and just put area rugs down on the floors. Also for your amusement, Rainer tells me that “Laaber” means “blah blah” in German, and Laaber is located on the Laaber River, so officially, it’s Laaber an der Laaber, or “Blah blah on the blah blah”. The residents are Laaberer, and this is the German word for people who talk too much. So soon we will be Laaberers!
I also carved the pumpkin, but was not in the mood to make pie. Hopefully no one steals it. Oh yeah, and speaking of stealing, it’s pretty common in Germany to tie up your dog in front of the grocery store if you run in to buy something. Well, my physical therapist told me that a golden retriever was stolen from in front of our local Kaisers recently. Man, I tie up Charlie there all the time. Guess he won’t be making anymore trips with me. That sucks. Stealing family pets is really horrible!
In good news, we got accepted by the private insurance company. It seems that the advisor guy really didn’t know what he was talking about. If we accept, it’ll only be about € 470 a month for both of us. That’s not so bad.
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poor charlie. hopefully he’s doing better today. i can remember when i had my cat neutered. he was wobbling all over the place and was just pitiful to look at. he couldn’t even focus and every time he looked at me (in a very accusing way!), i had to look somewhere else quickly, because the poor thing was cross-eyed and i didn’t want to laugh at him.
When we were leaving the vet, I walked out the door and Charlie walked into the doorjamb. I had to bite back the laughter, the poor pathetic guy! But he seems to be almost back to his happy joyful self today.