Less Than Jikko (Best Medicine)

Don't let the title of this hallowed blog or my seemingly oft disturbed mental state -- that was written self-deprecatingly; you shouldn't be nodding right now* -- give you the wrong impression, CR; I'm far from a fan of non-legal psychoactive drugs, most of the legal ones as well, unless they're acronymed JD, JB, or BJ (illegal in eighteen states). I can count the number of times I've smoked pot (NEVER IN KOREA) on one hand, the number of times I've enjoyed it on none. Similarly, my wife, the illustrious and praiseworthy Legs, has no illegal vices** save perhaps driving without a seat belt and abusing small children***. Our six-year-old Shih Tzu, Jikko, however? As I discovered yesterday, she likes to get high as a fucking kite.

Jeez. You think you know a canine.

The best addicts hide their addictions well, which is why I was so utterly dumbfounded when I learned that mein schön hund, 내 이쁜강아지, had been abusing drugs since Christmas. "That's only thirteen days," you might say, but it's a year and a quarter in dog reckoning.

And I never saw it coming. I suppose, in that sense, I'm partly to blame. Cue the dramatic intro music.

It all started yesterday, as most days removed twenty-four hours do. Recovering from a massive head cold but not yet out of the woods, I took a half-day off from work (work, "work"). By mid-afternoon I was feeling much better, so I wrested my frozen ass from my bonechair and started tidying up Chez Sparklegs in preparation for my regular Wednesday tutor session: three friends of mine, each as handsome as the other, I their guru ala Tony Robbins on matters spiritual, existential, and sports/sex. Potential tithers, yeah!

Up until then, Jikko (dear Jikko) had been her normal, everloving self: frisky, genial in that dog sort of way, hounding for scraps Kitchen and Table. It was only when I turned on the vacuum cleaner that she started acting a little bit unusual. I should preface this by stating that I'm not really surprised when Jikko does something out of the ordinary. She's as cute as a button's baby and more likable than the Consumers Distributing catalog(ue) to an 80's kid with a Nintendo/Hasbro hard-on, but she does stuff that I can't, with my big, logical human brain and no experience as a dog whisperer, fathom. I suppose the feeling is very mutual on her part.

So when I started up the vacuum -- normally her most feared home appliance not named "microwave" -- and she started running in circles around it, I thought it must have been because she had to poop (*laughs*). When I turned the vacuum off and she continued acting a little more oddly than usual, bobbing her head up and down, left to right, staring toward the ceiling like she was communicating with phantoms, I shrugged it off as some sort of pre-poop ritual. (We all have them. I tend to smoke; other people prefer coffee. Jikko has a habit of scratching the bathroom's porcelain walls. Whatever delivers the mail on time is my motto.) When it continued for an hour, though, I started to get concerned.

My tutoring session came. Jikko, always the most amiable of dogs to everyone who visits our home (and if you're packing some snack action, all the better), was agitated the entire time, ignoring everyone and talking to invisible ghosts****. Had I known then the cause of her ailment, I would have taken her to the vet immediately. You know, the Whats and the Ifs.

As the class neared its end, Jikko peed on the floor, a big (HUGE) warning sign. I hate to anthropomorphize animals*****, but for Jikko that was akin to a grown man soiling himself on a bus or a choir member vomiting it church. Yeah, maybe it happens; but we all have our pride, and Jikko's is as hard as the Liberty Bell: a fissure, maybe, but that baby won't break. Word to Reagan MacNeil, you know something's wrong when Jikko pees on the floor among good company.

It's here where things get intentionally vague(r), and rushed, maybe because I'm deflecting blame; maybe I'm protecting Legs; maybe because these things will sort themselves out in manners Resentful, Remorseful, Reproachful, and everything in between. Maybe.

For now, though, let's hope/pray that Jikko pulls through. She overdosed on cold medication and is recovering after a night in doggy detox. She's still not completely well, and she might not ever be.

We can laugh about it later, like, "Remember the time you gave cold medication to your dog and she went a little loopy?"

Or we can't.


* I don't know karate, but I know karazy, and she spells her name with a ㅈ, a ㅁ, and a ㅇ.

** That I know of!

*** Wait, no, that was my last wife. I'm going to have to start writing memos on my body like that dude in the movie starring Guy Pearce. L.A. Confidential I believe it was called.

**** I've been to that party.

***** Yet I feel I must. In her own doggy way, 꼬 curses like a sailor, flirts like a strawberry whore, and drinks water like a marathon runner, vodka like an exiled Russian.