Celebrating Motherhood with Kate and Will

“Yoda! Yoda! Come here, buddy!” I yelled, trying to get Yoda from the landing on the stairs leading down to the locked door to the apartment below our duplex. Yoda knew exactly who Dr. Patrice was and why he was there.

We welcomed Yoda as the newest member of our family on Sunday evening. A Rwandan dog, he has lived with various American expat families in the past 11 years. According to our night guard, Yoda lived in our complex a few years ago with another family.

Yoda has an ear infection, so the vet came out Monday morning to do a cleaning procedure on his ears. I didn’t realize this would involve anesthesia. I also didn’t realize I would be the vet’s assistant, as the doctor has one working arm and is a bit older. And I didn’t realize coming off of anesthesia is a messy business.

As soon as Dr. Patrice walked in, Yoda ran down into the stairwell, shaking. We were able to give him the anesthesia while balancing between the two sets of stairs, but it wasn’t enough. We had to give a second shot after waiting futilely for 20 minutes for him to fall asleep.  Carrying all 60 pounds of him, I was able to get him up the stairs and on top of our coffee table, which served as the operating table. After the procedure was done, the vet asked where I wanted Yoda to be when he woke up (which could take up to two hours). I said the spot on the carpet next to the coffee table was fine and looked comfortable. The vet looked at me like I was crazy, and I later learned why.

Yoda woke up after about two hours. Woozy, drooling, and struggling to stand up, he then proceeded to vomit and urinate for the next three hours in almost every room on the first floor as well as the stairs.

We are living out of our suitcases for the most part and are lucky to have paper towels and a few very thin rags in our welcome kit for cleaning. I also had some off-brand “pine cleaner" from the Kenyan grocery store. The color of the liquid matched what Riley was, um, booting, which was handy. I used a a toothbrush from the toiletry kit on our flight over here to scrub the liquid into the carpet.

At one point during his careening around the house (no pet/baby gates yet…it’s VERY much going on the next Amazon order), I stopped cleaning for a bathroom break for myself only to find that he crawled halfway up the stairs to the landing, peeing all the way down behind him. I had to lift him up to carry him off the stairs so he wouldn’t fall down. I put him down next to his crate. Bad idea. Running to get paper towels to clean up the stairs, I found Yoda in his crate with that morning’s breakfast everywhere, along with whatever liquid he had left in him.

By dinner, he was feeling much better, if still a bit disoriented. I’m happy to say he’s fine now, although Dr. Patrice will be coming each day for the next five days to help me administer his ear drops. No anesthesia required for that, thank goodness.

So, while the Duchess of Cambridge celebrates the arrival of the new prince (although something tells me she has people to clean up after her little guy) we celebrated the arrival of our big prince to the family. And instead of blue floodlights, we have the green glow of the “pine cleaner” to welcome him.