cracked

Posted by admin | April 7, 2020

Milo had his annual teeth cleaning in February. We put it off as long as we could and probably waited too long. The vet said that one of his teeth had a minor crack going back to the xray from a year ago. Sometime in the last year, that crack worsened and caused the tooth to break. We knew Milo was in some pain, but didn’t know how much or what the cause was.

The tooth was extracted and Milo had to be babied for a while after his surgery. He couldn’t eat dry food or treats. While not really a liquid diet, there was a lot he couldn’t eat. He loved the wet food, though, but he was missing the chew sticks and other hard treats. He would swallow his soft treat and then look at me for more. I sometimes gave him an extra soft treat, especially if I had given Zailey a chew stick or something of that nature. I guess I cracked under those eyes looking up at me.

After he went back to the hard stuff, he still has some issues. He is eating his chew sticks very carefully and slowly. You could tell he is still in some pain. He is even get snappy with Zailey, Jynx, my wife, and I. It is no fun, but I really don’t want to take him to the vet again.

In my various writing groups, I would do these writing exercises. I have a notebook full of them and another partial one. The full one, I’ve earmarked certain ones (the stronger ones) to expand into full short stories and give them more life. The others, I largely ignore.

The other day I was looking through my notebook when I found a snippet that wasn’t earmarked for inclusion. This snippet was badly written for one thing, which is probably why I didn’t want to include it, but it had some aspects that were great. It was a pirate story about how a first mate was selected by a captain. I flipped the script and instead wanted to show the rise through the ranks for a pirate trying to become captain. While being part mystery, there were a bunch of politics involved. It was a much more thrilling aspect. So out of the dud, came this great story. I cracked it open by letting it go a different direction than the original snippet.

So, cracks aren’t always bad. What is bad for Milo can be a good thing for me.