i had been planning on writing a summary of susanna's shoe choices as of late. the girl has more shoes than liam and chris combined -- black patent flats for church, two pairs of sneakers, brown mary janes, shiny silver flats for dressy outfits, pink crocs and rainboots and flipflops and about five different pairs of sandals ... you get the idea. and yet, despite the wide variety of footwear at her fingertips, every day except wednesdays (which is her required sneaker day for P.E.) she makes a beeline for the same exact pair: her cowgirl boots.
i tell you what, for the $30 or so we paid at target for these fake brown leather gems, we've certainly gotten our money's worth.
cowgirl boots with jeggings -- what more could a first-grade fashionista want?
about an hour after i snapped this photo, super and i took a ride to the vet. the poor girl has some sort of hind leg problem that has been getting noticeably worse, and after swallowing a roughly $1000 vet bill right before christmas to have all those teeth extracted, i figured it was time to drop some more money on her.
and let me just tell you -- it's a problem that's affecting all of us. well, chris and me, anyway. she's gotten to the point that she cannot navigate our stairs. the hardwoods make them too slippery for her, and so, every time she needs to go up or down from one floor to the other, we have no choice but to carry her. luckily she's only 45 pounds ... but do that a few times a day and you start to feel it. who needs to work out when you're lugging 45 pounds up and down, over and over again?! (note: this afternoon we're having a runner installed on our stairs to help the sweet thing out. we're crossing our fingers that our carrying days are soon a thing of the past.)
what the vet told me was that it's surprisingly not a skeletal or muscular issue -- it's actually neurological. she's got this disease that's common in boxers (what isn't? i've started to wonder) where the neurological pathway from her brain to her right hind leg isn't functioning properly. the good news is that she's not in any pain. the bad news is that her leg splays out to the side because she can't tell it to stay in place. and in a house that has a main floor that's totally hardwoods, that's a serious problem. she'll just be standing there, drinking water, and we'll watch her right leg go completely horizontal. to eat dinner, she'll actually take a mouthful of food and walk into the family room to stand on the rug to eat it just so she can stay stationary on a non-slippery surface. and taking her on a walk outside? forget it. she balks and refuses to go one step farther because she can't control that leg.
and so, you might wonder, what's the solution? nothing, really. she's now on some medication that's supposed to improve the neurological thingy, but it's just a matter of time (maybe months, maybe years) before it progresses up her body. in the meantime -- and this is where this post ties in with susanna -- she's gotten some new footwear of her own: these little balloon-type things that help her feet have traction on our slippery floors so she can stand upright without sliding.
in other words ... boots!
still not used to these bright blue suckers. perhaps susanna can show her how to strut around in style
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