Here she is, our lovely Gracie, who will be eight months old next week. She looks to be very helpfully shoveling snow in this photo, but she just really likes chewing on the shovel. Sometimes it really is like having another child. And this morning I’ve been consumed with a dilemma about her the same way I get consumed with worrying about some issue with my daughter. Way back almost a year ago, we booked a two week cruise. (In my opinion, the absolute best part of living in Europe is being able to go on vacation for more than a week at a time.) This was before we got Gracie. She’s a golden retriever and she actually has her papers, she’s beautiful and great with kids. I’ve had dogs before, but I’ve never bred one before. And we were leaning towards breeding Gracie. But now it seems she may be in heat just when we leave for our cruise, making it impossible to kennel her. Ugh.
So, now we are contemplating getting her spayed. It makes me sad. But with my family in the US and Frank’s in Germany, we have to travel a lot just to see family. Maybe it just isn’t realistic to think we can breed Gracie anyway. It’s another one of those moments when I fantasize about buying a fixer-upper house in America and JUST STAYING THERE. For, you know, the duration. So many things we do are predicated with the hypothetical, but very likely analysis, “But if we move again . . . ” Home improvements are not made for our benefit, but for the benefit of those people we want to someday love our house and buy it. So we can move again. Ugh.
So anyway, I bit the bullet and made a call to the vet’s office. These phone calls always require some deep breaths and little recitations in my head of what I am going to say, making sure I can access all the necessary vocabulary in my brain. I successfully stumbled through another Swiss German/high German conversation and made the appointment to get Gracie spayed next week. There’s time to cancel if we change our minds, but I am afraid we probably won’t.
myowngeography 