We don’t call her Chatty Cathy for nothing!  I suppose the alternate title for this could be “Our Poor Neighbors.”  Fortunately and luckily for us, our neighbors absolutely adore Tot (and Kiki too!)!  And yes, she really does bark that much.

Tot made it through a massive cyst removal surgery earlier this week and it’s been really tough on her but she’s doing extremely well.  The cyst was larger than they had thought and had eaten through so much bone in her mouth that her jaw was nearly broken, it will be as fragile as a “wine glass” for the next 6 months or so.  When the vet first told us how fragile her jaw was/is, these horrific images flashed in my mind of Tot getting too excited and accidentally slamming into the wall last week – or launching her body to stop airborne toys about 300 times a day and crashing into things – you get the picture…  She’s our rough and tumble little girl but she’s going to have to learn to take things down a notch until the bone graft starts to heal.  Something tells me this won’t be easy!

She’s been a real trooper throughout!  However, she was pissed when she was finally cognitive enough to notice that all of her toys were suddenly M.I.A.  I wonder if she thinks she woke up in some alternate universe where toys don’t exist!  Rest assured, her toys will find their way back to her in a week and a half.  Until then, they remain in a super top secret hiding location (luckily Tot hasn’t sniffed them out yet!)

I took the rest of the week and this weekend off to care for her and help her recover (I’ll still be answering e-mails though).

Dental Specialist extraordinaire, Dr. Chamberlain and his staff Michele and Jenn went so far above and beyond – we are eternally grateful for their expertise, compassion and kindness.  They genuinely care about each pet and that is a very rare thing.  For someone who loves their pets as much as I do, it means the world to me.

I was all prepared to write up a blog post to tell you that I was going to start implementing Tater Tot Tuesday and Makena Monday – when my husband walked in my office, saw the title ‘Tater Tot Tuesday’ and jokingly said it sounds like a school cafeteria lunch menu.  Oh good lord!  Apparently my new idea might need some rethinking and fine tuning.

Anyways, I was about to say that Tater Tot’s hierarchy of favorite things in the whole entire world goes a little like this…

#1  mom (I’ve started calling Tot my shadow)

#2  dad

#3  food

#4  toys

#5  laundry day (she has anointed herself the official special helper of laundry day)

#6  going on walks

Now, lets say that Tot is next to me and her dad walks through the door.  For the next 5 minutes, I drop to #2 and Matt moves up to #1.  If Tot gets a new toy, it moves up to #1 on her list for about a week – especially if it has a super durable squeaker.  If it is laundry day, that instantly moves to #1 because she considers socks to be new toys.  Every meal time, food ranks #1 and always instantly trumps everything else until she is fully satisfied that she has gotten every single crumb off of the carpet (that’s how she got the nickname Mini Hoover).  My point in all of this is that the hierarchy of what is important to her is constantly changing depending on circumstance, and it brings me so much joy to see her so enthralled with whatever is currently #1 in her hierarchy.

Our last laundry day certainly ranked #1 on her list because as always, she got to be my special helper and deemed herself the official Guardian of the Socks.  Which is so ironic because she wants to protect them and destroy them at the same time.  It sometimes makes me wonder if she’s been secretly reading Twilight.

My point of all of this is to share a photo of little Tot in her prime enjoying her current favorite thing of the day, laying on a huge pile of clean clothes, watching me dangle a sock above my camera that she desperately wants to lunge for…