Skip to main content

Dog Days of Exaggeration

I had a 6:30 pm PTA meeting last night during which Hero Guy generously offered to "babysit" even though he was on call for the ambulance. The meeting was at a house just a couple of streets down, so we agreed that I would run home should he get an emergency call. Once I got to the meeting, I realized I didn't have cell phone reception, so I called him to give him the house number where I was. Approximately 90 seconds later, the phone rung, and it was Hero Guy....already.

HG: Did you run over the dog when you left for your meeting?
ME: Um, no.
HG: Well, you must have.
ME: Why?
HG: The dog just came running in the house and her ear is half ripped off.
ME: O, NO! What happened?
HG: You must've caught her head under the tire.
ME: What other injuries does she have?
HG: Just the ear.
ME: Is she whining?
HG: No, I don't think she even realizes anything is wrong.
ME: What is she doing?
HG: Jumping up and down, wagging her tail.
ME: Put some peroxide on it--I'm sure it will be okay if she isn't acting like she's in pain. I'll bet she got after an animal over in the brush and it bit her, or maybe she even got caught in the pricker bushes.
HG: Oh, no, you definitely ran her over.

Upon returning home, I inspected the tattered ear. It was more like a 1/8-inch cut on the corner of her ear. I'm quite sure I would have never noticed it if I hadn't been looking for it. I'm not sure how Hero Guy even saw it when the dog came bounding in the house in her usual manner. This would be the very same dog that has encountered two rabid raccoons (one requiring all four of us to undergo the rabies vaccination series) and the same dog who has gotten sprayed head on by skunks, not once, not twice, but three times (including Sunday night as the in-laws were leaving our house). It would also be the same dog who has sneaked 2 birds into our house and who regularly feasts on field mice whenever I am adhering her to the low-cal diet the vet has her on. She acts absolutely thrilled with herself each and every time she encounters any type of wildlife--and that is often since we live in the boonies.

Somehow I'm thinking the almost visible nick in her ear will do just fine. And I'm also thinking there would've been a lot more indication if I had actually run her over with my van--like some yelping and broken bones maybe?

Comments

Anonymous said…
Remind my dear cuz that we have a little saying here in the good ole' USA - "innocent until proven guilty!" :-) If you were to run over him somehow I think more than an earlobe would have gotten under the tire.

Poor Johnny boy, he just so desperately needed some kind of horrific event to fulfill his hero quota for the night and instead he was left with only a small tatter on a dog's ear!
10/03/2006 2:50 PM
Unknown said…
I think 'Hero Guy' just needed an excuse to call you.
10/05/2006 10:11 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stickin' It Out

I got married today. Well, not exactly today. It was Friday, June 2. But the year was 1989 - 17 years ago. "Amazing", people say. "Good for you", they comment. "You must have picked the right one", the add. Amazing? Yes. Good for me? I'll admit it. But it has nothing to do with picking the right one, really. It's not because I found the perfect boy, and it's certainly not because he found the perfect girl. It might sound a little unromantic, but there never really is a 'right one' floating around out there waiting in the cosmos for the other 'right one' to crash and connect. There may be 'better ones'; there may be 'more easily compatible' or something or other. But the real story is you start becoming the right one the moment you vow that "you do". When I married, I had been 20 for a whole 33 days, we had just completed a 2-year long-distance realtionship and HE was five years older tha...
19 comments
Read more

Week 3 of half marathon training

This week brought very cold temperatures that caused a challenge for some of my runs. It is almost impossible for me to stay comfortably warm when it gets below 20 degrees. I did my first hill workout, which is meant to strengthen a different set of muscles and increase your speed. I did that on the treadmill on Monday because the weather was dangerously wet and we were in a flood state--I decided not to risk getting drenched by passing cars. The rest of the week had runs ranging between 3 and 5 miles. My week culminated with a 6 mile "long run". I had to put that off on Saturday because the temperature hovered around 14 degrees, and the weatherman promised a balmy 20 degrees on Sunday! I really don't like running on Sunday--it is a full day of church and family dinner and activities and I am usually too pooped out to take a long run. But I planned carefully, took some extra snacks to church to keep fueled up, and headed out the door while my sweet hubby fixed lunch for t...
19 comments
Read more

Gourmet Tastebuds Looking for Chef

Brainy Boy is every good cook's dream. He will eat anything as long as it smells like food and he can't identify it. Routinely when I set dinner before him, he comments something like 'Mom, I just really prefer gourmet restaurant-type food." And he's not kidding. No PJB for him, no Chef Boyardee, no Easy Mac. He's all about shrimp scampi, homemade gnocchi (not frozen) and is dying to know what caviar tastes like. The problem is that I'm a functional meat & potatoes kind of cook. I'd love to be a throw-ingredients-together-to-make-an-awesome-dish girl, but I'm just not. I don't really know how to cook without burying my head in a cookbook, and I don't enjoy the whole process of putting it together either--kind of the same way I am with gardening. I came up with the clever idea of letting Brainy Boy choose a meal a week that I would try, his choice. I pulled out my handy Kraft magazine that comes in the mail four times a year, a...
10 comments
Read more