Yesterday I was a dog. Today I’m a dog. Tomorrow I’ll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There’s so little hope for advancement. (Charles M. Schultz)
My dog, Lucy, had a traumatic experience last weekend. And she’s not talking about it. She’s one of those Heinz 57 dogs that has who knows what breeds in her. Her mother was the same. Father unknown. The mother dog was a neighbor’s dog who had pups in our garage/shed. The grandkids wanted to keep one of them and Lucy was their pick. She had the neatest green eyes when she was a pup, but now they are golden. The only breed I’m sure she has a bit of is beagle because she loves to hunt. Unfortunately with her short legs she’s never going to catch anything. Or perhaps that’s usually fortunate.
We’re not sure if she caught something last week that turned out badly for her or if something caught her. Definitely bad either way. She went for a walk with me in the early afternoon Friday. She always disappears hunting so it wasn’t unusual for her not to get back to the house with me. Then my husband comes in a couple of hours later and says what happened to Lucy.
An excellent question. She was covered with black gooky stuff from her neck to the tip of her tail and very subdued. She crawled back under some shelves in the garage and just wanted to be left alone. It wasn’t until I was trying to wash the stuff off her that I realized she had bite marks and a nasty torn wound on her hip. Vet time. Turned out ribs were broken too. And now she’s recuperating in the house and not talking about what happened. I think she wants to enter the dog witness program.
For a while she was almost afraid to go outside for anything and stayed right under my feet when I took her out. She’s still doing some odd things. Growls at one of the neighbor dogs that normally was a buddy. Doesn’t mind Oscar, my dog, or the other neighbor dog. My daughter suggests that maybe this now unfavored dog deserted Lucy when whatever it was grabbed her and she’s not about to forgive him for leaving her in the lurch. None of the other dogs came in with black gook on them. So it’s a mystery. But I’m suspecting coyotes and a very lucky dog who found some hole to crawl into to get away. A black oily hole, but one that maybe saved her life.
So now, unless we hire a dog psychic (really, they have some out there) we’ll never know what happened to Lucy. Maybe I’ll change her name to Lucky Lucy. Or as my dad used to say, not so lucky because if she had truly been lucky she’d have gotten home from her hunt without any injuries.
Dogs. They can have some interesting adventures, but Lucy’s wishing she hadn’t hunted up that one last week.
Do you have any dog tales to tell?