Lame is the new black

Bullseye was sequestered from the family last night.  We had a makeshift gate blocking off part of the yard because we wanted her to stay there for a few days for long involved reasons that don't matter here.  She didn't like being further from her people, but I planned to take her for a walk (her favourite thing) every morning of her isolation, and we played with her all yesterday, throwing the ball for her to fetch (her second favourite thing) and slipping her treats whenever we passed (her third favourite thing.)

Last night, a few hours into her incarceration, I saw her at the back door.  She had escaped from her fence and come to join us and this made me feel sorry for her, but not enough to give up and let her back with us just yet.  I put her back in her fenced area where I'd put her kennel, sleeping mat, and food and water bowls and told her I would be back to walk her early in the morning.

Poor Bullseye.  As I lay in bed later, I heard it begin to rain.  I worried that she might find that particularly depressing, but assumed she would recover from that as soon as she heard me coming with her lead to walk her in the morning.  I went to sleep and didn't think much more about her.

I woke up early in the morning and went out to her, thinking she might be at the gate already, but she wasn't.  She is a deep sleeper and she's not really a Morning Dog, so sometimes the waking and stretching takes a little time.  When I rattled her lead, she woke up and poked her head out of the kennel.

Instead of her usual leg-extending morning stretch, she staggered out of her kennel and fumbled towards me.  Thinking she must have been wrenched from a deep dream, I told her to take it easy until she'd properly woken up.  But the next few metres of staggering told me she wasn't okay.  She was lame.

Now at this point, the fact that she'd never been sequestered from her people before matched up pretty neatly in my mind with the fact that she'd never been lame before.  I remembered how she'd been so desperate to rejoin us that she's escaped the night before, and I remembered my concern about her mental health once it started raining.

A big psychosomatic sook causing her legs to cease working, I thought.

We gave her a nice place to rest, plenty of water to drink, and lots of love for the next few hours.  But instead of getting better, she started getting worse.

It was then that we suspected that she may have a paralysis tick, and the rest of the day proved that she did.  Adding humiliation to insult, the vet shaved her from head to tail in order to find the tick that had attached to her neck under her collar region.  Tonight she is recovering in hospital and we are all feeling a little easier about the poor little hound.

But is it any surprise to you that Little Miss Jessie, she of the never-ending drama, awoke from her nap this afternoon moaning and complaining and grumbling, "Oh no!  I'm lame!  My legs don't work!"

She has been clambering about on her knees, grabbing furniture and walls for support and asking to be lifted up onto chairs because of her lameness (when she remembers she is supposed to be lame, that is.)

It seems that Lame is the New Black.

It started off quite cute, but now it's getting on our nerves.  What are the chances that next season, Mute is the New Black?