We talk quite a lot about how we miss our good friends every time we leave a duty station. It's always a sad experience, and only tempered by the fact that we know we'll make more friends. And we'll keep in touch with the friends we leave behind.
But we never think about how our pets feel...
Ike hasn't left friends behind in a PCS yet, but he does have a military pet friend - Sarah's dog Charlie.
Charlie has come to visit us twice, and he and Ike spent the entire visit both times rolling around rambunctiously. No rug was safe from their antics.
In fact, this last visit Ike's toe got stuck under a baseboard during one wrestling session and his toenail was ripped off just above the root. Yes, the fluffy Tibetan Terrier in that picture kicked my pit bull's behind.
Who's the vicious one now?
Sarah and Charlie left from their latest visit last Thursday evening, and by Friday morning I noticed something different about Ike. He seemed to be in the throws of a clinical depression. He wouldn't get up, he wouldn't go outside to go potty, he wouldn't eat. Apparently, my dog needed Prozac.
He hadn't been limping on his missing nail the day before, but suddenly the dog needed a cane to navigate from the kitchen to the dining room. I'm kind of surprised that he didn't get a pair of tight black man jeans and go emo on me.
Who would have thought that my dog would be depressed because another dog went home from his visit? Especially since I never would have pegged Ike and Charlie as BFF with all their wrestling! It doesn't seem like they're having any soul-searching doggie conversations about the meaning of life or anything.
I'm possibly a very bad person, because I've been laughing at my pathetic pittie since Friday. The thought of a dog with clinical depression just cracks me up. And he is better now - by Saturday he was going potty outside (very melancholy-like, but actually walking outside on his own power), by Monday he was participating more in family life than his previous laying on the bed like life had ended. Yesterday he actually talked to me!
Ike hasn't made any neighborhood doggie friends yet, and I'm thinking that it might be best if he doesn't. I know we'll be leaving here, and having a teenager is bad enough. I don't need to add an emo dog into the moving mix!
