The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

The Good...

If you know me, I've probably just caught your attention, because I never use the word good in the same sentence as my dear husband's dog, Jack.

However, if you've heard me tell Jack stories before, you know he is "accident prone".  That is putting it lightly.  This dog has cost us more in vet bills than I've spent on groceries in the past five years.  There was emergency surgery to remove a neonatal binki from his ruptured intestine, the dead bird, delivered to our bed, that made him deathly ill, and just last month, the two inch patch of skin ripped off his leg on a barbed wire fence that required a skin graft.  So, to clarify, the good is that Jack is alive.  My husband won't be divorcing me this week because I killed his dog.

The Bad...

The bad is one jumbo sized bouncy ball that came home in a birthday goody bag. 

Let's compare it to a quarter, just to put the story in context, so you understand that this isn't your average sized bad ball.

The Ugly...

Yes, I'm the ugly.  More specifically the shiner that Jack gave me...  but let's back up for just a second so you can fully appreciate the story.

Above mentioned ball comes home from birthday party and is promptly identified as a "dog hazzard" by ever vigilant mom (I'm making myself look good here because the above picture is so not pretty) and placed on the kitchen island for safe keeping. While preparing dinner, lunatic children invade the kitchen, capture villain ball and proceed to drop it.  Ever observant dog immediately retrieves.  Children, who have been warned of "the danger of the ball" scream and attempt to recover it, which causes dog to promptly swallow said object in fear.  Rather, since I would imagine it is hard to swallow an orb the size of an orange, the dog begins to gag and writhe on the floor making pathetic choking sounds.  The children scream "He swallowed the ball!" while I stare for a moment in stunned disbelief, thinking "How could he swallow something that large?"  before springing into action, sticking  my entire arm down the dog's throat and then attempting to administer the doggy Heimlich Maneuver to flailing 50 pound beast.  Five seconds later, everyone else launches into action.  I'm screaming at the children to look for the ball to confirm accidental swallowing.  The children are screaming "He has it, we can't find it!".  The two other dogs (yes, please recall that I live in a zoo), sensing danger, insert themselves into the situation.  Rocky starts attacking Jack because he believes he is hurting me rather than just choking and my husband's "other" dog, Doc, who is a dumb jock, starts biting everyone and everything, because truly, he has no idea what is going on.  I begin dragging the choking animal by the collar into mud room to attempt a peaceful resuscitation and finally manage to slam the door where I'm able to ascertain that, thankfully, the dog is now breathing, but, the ball is no where to be found.  The children tentatively knock the door to beg admittance, confirm the ball is missing and ask what I'm going to do.  Should we call dad?  I begin to cry because I have no idea what to do and darn it, this is really putting a crimp in my plans for a nice dinner, which I can smell burning in the kitchen.

I won't explain all the excruciating details of the next half an hour when I try to decide where to find an emergency vet on a Sunday night.  How to get children and ball containing dog into the car.  Whether to call my husband at work and confess to the fiasco.  But then, I hear a rumble...  Could it be that the ball is disagreeing with the dog?  Will it come out on its own?  He begins pacing...  He lies down with his nose in the corner, a telltale sign is is about to hurl.  And then, blessedly, the dog pukes.  I have never been so happy to see a mucous covered three inch bouncy ball in my life and promptly grab it with my bare hands and discard it while the children scream in disgust.

The black eye...  I didn't discover that until the next morning, but I have to assume it was inflicted in the process of trying to deliver sharp thrusts into the abdomen of a very large choking canine.  I still have it.  For the last two weeks, everywhere I've gone, everyone I've seen, I've had one lingering, getting progressively worse, black eye. I'm beginning to fear it's permanent.

Just another quiet evening at our house.