The Art Angel

Years ago, I went to the Milwaukee Art Museum, known around town as “the Calatrava” because of its bird-in-flight modern design by the noted architect. In the gift shop, I found a little aluminum slug with an archangel on one side, a bas-relief of sorts. I picked it up and put it in the chest pocket of my cotton knit vest where it stayed for a long time. The last time I washed the vest and laid it out to dry, the Art Angel was no longer there.

Sara, the rescue dog we’ve been caring for the past couple of months was spayed three weeks ago. Nine days ago, after she was nearly healed from the spay, she was severely attacked by another dog in the country neighborhood, who we do not know. But she made it home and laid, motionless, in the front yard until I saw her. Puncture wounds are nasty, so even though we cleaned her up, the leg swelled massively due to infection and just today, thanks to antibiotics, the swelling began to subside.

Poor sneaky, slippery outdoor Sara has been in a crate all that time, not eating much and having a generally miserable time of it. Epsom salt baths every day. Antibiotics hidden in sausage meat. I finally made her a meat loaf yesterday because she’ll only eat out of my hand and not much at that. An outdoor dog forced indoors because of the freezing weather (it’s snowing in Texas today), I don’t know how she’ll feel about human companionship if she gets through this. She’s not potty trained so we’re going through wee wee pads like crazy because she can’t move around yet.

Last night she ate her new prescription pill (in a sausage ball) and perked her head up a bit. Her tail wagged slightly. This morning when I went in to check on her she was perky, wagging her tail, and ate two whole slices of meat loaf! The swelling looked like it was going down a bit, and as I was cleaning up I found a small piece of foil on the floor to throw away.

Except it wasn’t foil. It felt funny joining the dirty wee wee pads et al I was taking out to the trash, so I turned it over. It was my long-lost Art Angel. It had been watching over Sara all night, having fallen out of the secret pocket in the jacket I was wearing. Things are looking up in Sara-land! Let’s hope it stays that way, as I can’t wait until she bounds out of Princess Lulu’s crate and goes back to patrolling the farm. Hopefully she’ll not be calling on the neighbors again. She had been poorly treated by her original owners, then dumped so was understandably untrusting of humans, but it appears that other than her new best bud Princess Lulu, some of the neighbor dogs don’t like this 26-lb. sweet mutt very much. Not very friendly for country folk. Wish us well as we go through this challenging phase and hopefully have a happy, healthy spayed pup in the end. Cheers! Dee