Our new dog Zoe has pancreatitis.

She has been throwing up occasionally, which doesn’t worry me too much. Dogs do that, especially dogs like Zoe, who put the omni in omnivore. But after three times in a short period, I took her to the vet. He did blood work, but didn’t find anything at the time. Then a couple of days ago she really let loose, and I decided to take her back. This time they did a test specifically for pancreatitis, and she passed. Or rather, failed.

Aside from vomiting, the other symptoms include loss of appetite, lethargy, and stomach pain. The night before the vet visit, she refused her food. That was uncharacteristic. She has also told me several times that she wanted to cut our morning walks short, which is really unusual for a dog. She has also been whimpering some, but she’s normally a very vocal dog.

Pancreatitis is a serious condition in dogs. It can be fatal if it gets bad and isn’t treated. Zoe’s case seems not to be too bad. The vet gave me an antibiotic (two pills, twice a day), something to settle her stomach (once in the evening), and an antacid (once a day in the evening). He also put her on a special gastroenteritic diet, which is three or four times as expensive as our regular dog food. Oh, and she has a yeast infection in her ears, so she gets drops twice a day. That means I have to give her four pills every night. That’s a lot of peanut butter.

She’s also not supposed to have any table scraps. She’s used to getting our leftovers, so she won’t be happy about that.

However, there is some good news on the health front — we are scheduled to get our initial Covid-19 vaccinations on Friday, March 5. On Tuesday evening we got an email from the hospital where Leah had her surgery. They are setting up a vaccination clinic for employees and people over 65. Apparently they emailed anyone who has had treatment there.

When Leah and I go somewhere without Zoe, if we happen to leave our slippers at the door, we can count on having a missing slipper when we get back home. When we look around, we usually find the slipper on Zoe and Sam’s bed, back in our bedroom. Sometimes it ends up in the room we use for an office, where Zoe sometimes goes to sulk. We have concluded that Zoe gets something of ours to comfort herself while we’re away. The slipper is never chewed.

If we put our slippers in the closet next to the back door, Zoe sometimes goes into our closet and takes a dirty sock or something else out. It ends up where the slipper would have been. It’s comical and kind of touching.

I have also been leaving two pairs of leather gloves next to the wood-burning stove in our living room. We came home one day and one glove was missing. Of course we thought Zoe had taken it back to her bed, but it wasn’t there. I looked everywhere I thought there was even a slight chance it could be. I looked in our bedroom, our closet, the bathrooms, the office, the spare bedroom, under the couch — no luck. I eventually gave up and figured I would find it some day, somewhere.

So I ended up with three gloves by the stove. No problem; I only have two hands.

And then one day when we came back home, I found this on the dog bed that’s in front of our couch.

Sam was chewing on it. Sam, unlike Zoe, is destructive when he picks out an object with sentimental value. His chewing seems to be normal doggie obsessive. He chews on his bed sometimes. He has ruined a couple that way. He has chewed on the bottom of the curtains next to their bed in our bedroom. He chews the tails off the cat’s little mousie toys. And, apparently, he chews the palms off of leather gloves.

I looked around for the chewed pieces of the glove, but never found them. I have to assume he swallowed them. And, I think that means he chewed the original missing glove and swallowed the whole thing.

So far he hasn’t shown any signs of digestive problems. I haven’t been inspecting his scat carefully, but it must have passed by now.

So now I keep my gloves on a table.

Here are a few dogs photos to end the year.

Zoe lies on the sofa now, even when Leah is in the room. Sylvester has had his own chair for some time now. I thought it was for me when we bought it, but I was mistaken.

Sometimes Zoe spins a little.

She has a habit of peeking over the back of the sofa when we’re at the table.

I have been taking the dogs with me when I have to run errands. Sam has not thrown up so far, which is progress. I have also been letting Zoe off the leash to run out the garage door when I’m leaving. That’s a risk, since she has run away several times. So far that has been OK as well. Wednesday afternoon when I let her out she ran down beside the house and disappeared. I called and clapped my hands, and she came back. That was a relief. Leah told me she chased Sylvester up onto the front porch. That explained the running away. I don’t know what explains the coming back.

I have posted before about how vocal our dog Zoe is. I have a couple more examples.

She has different vocalizations for different situations. There is the impatient whine when I’m preparing her dinner. There is the sort of growling she makes, sometimes for unknown reasons, and sometimes because she has to go out to relieve herself. And then there are the simple barks.

She barks a lot. Sometimes it’s because she sees something that wasn’t there before, or maybe a cat that she has seen many times before, and sometimes just for the sake of barking, to announce her presence to the world.

She is certainly the most vocal dog I have ever had, and maybe the most vocal dog I have ever met.