"This dog weighs 70 pounds!"

Yesterday morning, I woke up feeling like I had the flu.

Too much champagne the night before + an existing bad cold = flulike symptoms.

The only place I wanted to be was in bed, but Ellie had a 10am appointment at the vet for her annual check-up and a few vaccinations.

"Do you want to go the vet today?" I asked her. She raised her head lazily from the pillow she had been sprawled across and then set it back down. "Good. Me neither."

As I pulled up the phone number of the vet's office on my iPhone, terrible scenarios started running through my head.

What if the vet examining her today discovered she had some bizarre disease?

"Thank God you brought her in," he would say. "If you had waited just a few more days, this dog would be toast."

"Right then. We're going to the vet," I told Ellie. "Get ready. And please don't puddle in the waiting room again."

An hour later, the two of us were sitting on the hard, wooden benches, listening to be called back.

"Ellie?" a kind vet tech smiled, emerging from one of the examination rooms.

"That's us!" I said, starting to walk towards the scale where Ellie would first need to get weighed.

But Ellie didn't budge.

"Heh, come on, Ellie," I smiled, as the entire waiting room focused its attention on us.

Ellie still didn't move.

Worse, she had set her paw down firmly on the leash! She was not going anywhere.

People were laughing at us now. This was just awesome.

"Alright then." I set my handbag back down on the bench and scooped Ellie up into my arms.

Everyone gasped and exclaimed. A middle-aged man graciously picked up my handbag and followed us dutifully to the scale where I set Ellie down.

"Thank you. I appreciate that," I told him.

"How did you do that?" the vet tech asked, her eyes wide. She read the scale and exclaimed to the entire waiting room, "This dog weighs 70 pounds!"

Everyone cheered for me, and I felt quite proud as I picked Ellie up a second time (much to everyone's amazement) and carried her into the examination room.

Of course, once we were in there, Ellie decided that she was going to look down and face the corner in defiance of the very nice vet.

I held her paw in support while encouraging her to give the vet a chance.

"Hey there, Ellie," he said sweetly, crawling on the floor beside her. "Ellie...do you like...WALKS?"

"That won't work," I told him. "She only likes to walk if she feels like it."

"Oh. Hmmm," the vet rubbed his balding head.

Finally, Ellie decided she was done facing the wall and let the vet examine her and give her three shots.

She was very, very brave.

For the rest of the day, I let her lounge and be lazy.

And bask in the fact that neither of us had to go through that for another year.