Living With Oreo

Here's a photo of Oreo from his extra-cute puppy days. As with children, one tends to occasionally get nostalgic for those supposedly simpler times. Except that they weren't simpler times. Puppies and babies are pretty much the same. They eat, poop, cry and sleep and the sooner you can get them past that stage, the better.

But there is one thing about Oreo's puppyhood that I miss: the absence of scratching. For some reason, the poor guy has taken to scratching himself frequently of late.

Cheryl says she's going to take him to the vet which is probably the sensible thing to do. But going to the vet is much like taking your car to the garage. Just walking through the door is going to cost you at least a hundred dollars and, more often than not, you'll end up forking out several times that amount.

A quick trip through Googleland on the Web revealed that, as with most things canine, scratching is not necessarily a simple matter. Yes, it could be fleas. But it could also be allergies, any one of a number of dermatological ailments or even a psychological condition requiring the services of a pet psychologist and a new line of credit at the bank.

All that to say that for the first time in my life, I'm hoping that Oreo has fleas. It's treatable and for relatively little expense. And in the world of dogs, that's the best that you can hope for.