This past week we took our spoiled rotten Tibet to be spayed. She’s a shih-tzu, five years old. By spoiled rotten, I mean, the kind of spoiled rotten that only the dog of a childless couple could be. Rot. Ten.

Her agony Tuesday night as I picked her up was all too familiar and I wished I could somehow express to her little tiny self that ‘I get it sister.’ I know how she feels wondering how she’ll look in her bikini this summer with this atrocious new scar on her belly. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have a sweet husband to tell her that he can’t even see it there. I know how she feels when she grows all too fond of the pain meds. I know how good it feels to have your every whim completely catered to and wanting to milk it for all its worth. However, where the similarities part ways is that none of my surgeries have ever required I shave my stomach. I’m either a really fortunate girl not to have beastly hair all over my stomach or, oh yeah, we’re not the same species!

Yes, I know my dog is a dog…. somewhere deep inside. Someone needs to tell her though.

I kind of laughed to myself the other night as she and I curled up together on the sofa that this officially means no one under our roof can have babies. To be honest, I think Tibet would have eaten her young. She’s well behaved, very sweet, has more personality than most people I know, and yet, I believe not an ounce of maternal instinct. I’ve probably done her a favor.

This summer at the beach, she can just tell the boys the scar is from a nasty bar fight and that they should have seen the other guy.