Shock and Awww

In this house it is quite the norm for me to get stumped or corrected by my aspies on a daily basis.  They call me out on pretty much every mistake I make.  "No mom, you don't jump in the car, you step into the car."  "MOOOMMMM.  Stop calling me baby, I'm a little kid.  I am four."  And everything in between.  But sometimes the things that comes out of their mouths leave me literally speechless.

For this little tale, I have to back up a few months.  2015 was what I would call a shitter year.  Many things occurred including the loss of three of our dogs.  Needless to say, with having aspies it was quite a unusual time for me.  They had so many questions about death, heaven, souls, and religion in general.  I dealt with answering questions that I swear top theologians experts would have struggled with and decided the best solution was to buy a bunch of books to help me explain the unexplainable.  As our therapist Nicole put it, "They are dealing with questions that I'm struggling with currently."  In the end, I think our approach is to practice what makes the most sense to them, so we were probably the only home in the southwest PA region that had a Day of the Dead ceremony to honor the puppies and family members we lost.  (Hey it was my oldest son's idea and it was quite beautiful, dog bone tributes and all!)

See, death is quite different for an aspie than for other folks.  Take for instance our dog, Bucket.  Bucket was deaf and was full of energy.  He loved to chase our chickens and on one beautiful summer day a series of unfortunate events unfolded.  The "baby" and I were outside feeding the chickens and Bucket was on the lead.  He was chasing a chicken playing and somehow got out of his harness.  He went after the chicken that took him on a little chase that was getting to close to the road.  Of course being deaf, he could not hear me running and screaming for him, and of course even though we live in the country, it was the one time a car was flying down our street at just the right time.  He died in my arms and I was devastated.  I couldn't stop crying (ugly sobbing is more of the description) and was quite perturbed that my boys seemed so unaffected by the horrific occurrence.

 Finally later in the evening, my oldest said, "Mom stop crying already,"  "I'm sad buddy.  It's okay to cry when you're sad. Are you sad?"  "No.  I'm not sad.  It was an accident.  I love Bucket but he's dead and crying will not bring him back. And now Lola and Charlie have a new friend to play with.  I'm happy for them."  "Oh.  Okay," I said.  Since, I had already explained Heaven and a soul to him with the others passing, he had already decided where Bucket was and has situated his emotions in the practical way that only aspies can.  Buckets death was done.  Finite.  Move on mama.  For them, life is black and white, no gray no way.

And so I vowed that we in no way would be getting another dog any time soon.  I needed a break.  NO WAY NO HOW would we get another dog.  I can see your heads shaking from here.  Yeah right Lisa.  Never say never.  Well, I should have known  better.  The week of Thanksgiving I got a call from a rescue place that they had a boxer that was in very bad shape that needed a foster home.  Crap, I thought to myself.  Sure, email me the pictures.  Poop, she's white.  Oh my gosh, look how skinny she is!  And then I heard myself saying, sure I'll be up to look at her.  And I was hooked at first sight.   Before I knew it, three days had passed and she was in my car on her way home with me on Thanksgiving day.  Hey, don't judge.  You would have done it too.  To give you an idea of her conditions; a normal boxer her size should weigh 60lbs.  She weighed 25 lbs.  She had a wound on her ear, and her eye, and had no clue what a toy was.  She needed us and as it turned out, we needed her.

I was so worried that she would be stand-offish or shy, but that was not the case at all.  She is a pure lover and if you let her, she would remove your first layer of skin through non stop kisses.  And she immediately took to the kids.  I mean immediately.  My oldest had a rough time on Thanksgiving and she would paw at him and lay on him to stop him from head banging or hitting himself.  She would kiss him and just put all of her 25 pounds on him.  Later that night, after we taught her that it was okay to lay on her new dog bed, my oldest said, "Mom, she really loves me."  "We have to fix her and keep her."  And that was that.  Our newest member of the House of Crazies was made official, and Daisy, a 9 year old tortured boxer,  found a forever home.

Think the story is done....oh silly you.  For this is not just a feel good story.  As the days passed and the boys got to exam her more and more, they began to notice some differences with Daisy than our other dogs.  You see Daisy looks like she has had many many litters.  In fact, she has had so many that her nipples hang down like a bad national geographic documentary.  Since none of our dogs have had litters we never had this before.  I noticed both boys looking at them and knew at some point I was going to have to address the issue, but boy I was not prepared for what came out of my youngest's mouth.

"Mommy, why does Daisy have so many wee-wees?"  "What!!??" I said.  "Wee-wees", as he pointed to her nipples.  "Is that because she has to pee a lot!?"

After a few moments of me trying not to laugh and scrambling to come up with an answer, I heard myself saying, "Yes hun.  That's exactly why."  I'll deal with those repercussions at a later date.




**Wanna know Daisy's progress. Like this page on Facebook as we continue to journey in the House of Crazies!**