The most inconvenient thing happened. We got a dog. Wasn’t wanting a dog. Don’t need a dog. But alas, here I am typing with a dog pressed up against my arm. Which makes typing, in addition to other things, a bit more challenging.
Now, it’s not that I’m not a “dog person”. I grew up with a dog. And a cat, and a horse, and cows, and at one point my brother had birds and fish. But I have over the last several years found dogs to be quite annoying and would say that if I had to choose, I would prefer to be a “cat person”. Dogs smell, cats don’t (just the litter box). Dogs bark (like all the flippin time), cats purr. You don’t have to go out in freezing weather to walk your cat. Cats are independent, you can leave them for days at a time if you set out enough food. So, yes, I was more of a “cat person”. In fact, we had a cat until we moved to South Carolina. My sweet (and possibly insane, like myself) sister-in-law offered to keep our cat while we made our transition. I wasn’t sure how it would go since they were adding the cat to a household of 3 kids, 1 dog, and 1 existing feline. But they blended beautifully. They were attached to her and she was attached to them and I didn’t want to mess anything up, so they have her permanently now. And this has been fine other than the occasional comment from my older son that he wants to get her back.
Then, a little over a year ago, a week and a half after moving into our house we had a bit of an incident. The boys were in the front of our house playing on the driveway when I could hear my younger son crying. Now, he had just turned 2 and honestly cried all the time, so i didn’t run outside at first. But then it sounded like a hurt cry. As I was walking to the door I heard my older son yelling, “mom, mom! we need help!” I will never get the image out of my head of our neighbors 60 lb. dog standing over my 30 lb. son lying face down on the concrete. This dog had a vicious growl and bark, and I have never been so terrified in my life. As I was running toward the dog screaming and waving my arms, I was thinking to myself that I wish I had grabbed my sons t-ball bat, because I was going to beat the SH!T out of that dog. The dog backed away enough for me to grab my son and all of us ran as fast as we could to get back into the house. It wasn’t until we got inside that I realized my son was bleeding. He had been bitten on top of his head.
As a mother, you have moments where you enter super human mode and can remain eerily calm in a moment of crisis. Well, this was not one of them. I was in an absolute panic, so I called my husband, who called the neighbor, who of course was not home. Then I called another neighbor to see what I needed to do. I needed someone to think for me and act for me. And she did exactly that. She came right over, got the boys and myself into her car and drove us to the emergency room. It could have been so much worse. Like way worse. Like, I don’t even want to think about how much worse. The icing on our cake was that the dog’s rabies vaccine was not current, so our son had to go through a preventative treatment for it which consisted of a shot on either side of each puncture wound (8 total), a series of 4 immunization injections, and an oral antibiotic.
After that, it’s fair to say that I no longer trusted dogs. It wasn’t that I didn’t like them, or thought they were all bad, but I learned that no one thinks their dog will hurt someone until it happens. (On a side note, our neighbors took care of the dog and all medical bills). I think my older son and I were the ones most effected by this event. My youngest son acted like nothing ever happened. I don’t want any of my children to live with fear, so I knew that one day we would need to get a dog. Didn’t think it would be now. When I’m pregnant. And going through the fostering-to-adopt process.
Here’s how it happened. Last week we were cleaning up from dinner and my hubby says, “there’s a little white dog walking down the street.” See, we live out in the country and we see all sorts of animals, but a dog alone on a dead end road was a bit odd. So he went out to see if the dog had a collar with a tag. No collar. I made my mistake by picking her up. I was a goner before we got her in the house. I know, I know, how could I have brought this stray dog in the house. It could have fleas or worms (she didn’t) or pee (she did) or just be really dirty (she was). But we had really bad winter weather coming and we didn’t think she would survive, so she slept in the laundry room that night. She had long hair that was matted so badly it was the size of my hand and to her skin. But she was so happy, and so sweet, and so playful. We all fell in love with her that night. The next morning I took her to a vet to get scanned to see if see had a microchip. No chip = new pet for us. We got her vaccinated, and then off to the groomer. Three hours later, she was as sassy as could be, living up to her new name of Miss Scarlet.
It’s been an adjustment. We are having to re-house train her and are trying to figure out a good sleeping arrangement, but I don’t have any regrets. I use to think those bumper stickers that said “Who Adopted Who?” were dumb and corny, but now I kind of get it. I feel like she adopted us. Turns out I’m kinda a “dog person” afterall.
Photo credit Andre Spieker