Joker Face

Bailey has never been a good traveler.  She started getting car sick as a puppy and then never out grew it as I hoped she would.  On top of the motion sickness, she gets anxious and moves around a lot, which makes her feel worse.  So I medicate her to make traveling easier on all of us. 

As Mike and I were getting ready to travel last week, I made sure to check we had enough pills for Bailey.  But I wondered that since Bailey is almost 5 (and has gray hair!), if by this point, she had outgrown her car sickness by now.  But since she's been medicated every (long) car trip since she was 2 I didn't know one way or the other.  But I wasn't about test my wonder by stopping the meds one way or the other. (and besides, Bailey sedated is funny)

So we're driving through the mountains of North Carolina, and I can tell the meds didn't exactly work this time.  Bailey never really calmed down from the start of the trip, so she's up and down, back and forth and just looking all around in the back seat.  I keep looking back to check on her, when I see her start to lick her nose, which is a telltale sign she's not feeling good.  And then, I see what I call her "joker face," this horrible, pinched look where the corners of her mouth pinch up and back and her eyes squint shut.  Helplessly, I just watch her get sick all over the backseat.

The poor thing looks at me for a second, her mess, and then starts to frantically cover it with the blanket we had in the backseat.  She pulls part of the blanket over it then noses it in place as if she was burying something.  She covers it enough to her liking, and plops down with a nothing to see here look.  We pulled over to get gas a few miles later, so I cleaned out the, umm, we'll say chunky parts best I could, and continued on our way without any more joker faces.  The trip home the meds worked like they should have and we made it home without incident.

But I guess I got my answer as to whether or not Bailey had out grown her car sickness. Greaaaat.