Several years ago, on the cusp of Thanksgiving, my dog was a young German Shepherd filled with exuberance and enthusiasm. Everywhere she went, she ran without looking first. Everything she did, she carried out without considering the consequences. And when she got the end of her tail chopped off by the storm door on the back porch, she merely yelped and continued her romping as if nothing was wrong. Other than her yelp, the only hint to us, the remaining occupants of the house, that she was injured at all was the result of her constant tail-wagging.
Apparently, when a dog whips around a limb, particularly one that is spouting blood, it tends to imitate a murder scene. In other words, the kitchen soon possessed a distinct lack of clean surfaces and an excess of red streaks on formerly clean surfaces.
From there it was an odd cross between a game of tag and a chore of hog wrangling, and once dog was lying still on the ground, we began to bind her wound. Wrapping the injury in gauze was a lesson in patience that required copious amounts of tape. My dog only escaped twice under the combined tutelage of my sister and me, with me as the doctor and her the muscle, but we eventually succeeded in our task.
The result was a messy and haphazard tourniquet. Thankfully, the wrapping stayed in place the remainder of the afternoon, and it seemed that her tail was not in danger of becoming uncovered any time soon. So with a deeply misplaced sense of optimism, my family decided that we would go to Chick-fil-a for dinner.
Upon finishing our meal, my family and I arrived home only to discover that we had made a dire mistake. A small collection of gauze and tape sat in the middle of the front hall, torn into strips by my dog’s mighty teeth. Following the occasional drops of blood through the living room and into the kitchen, we discovered another mistake that had been made, this one by my dog. For beside her exhausted and bloated body, there was a slab of cardboard wrapped in shredded plastic.
In our absence, my dog had pulled a package of 22 croissants from the counter and eaten all of it. Perhaps the deed would not have been so horrible if not for the nature of the croissants. They were not the pathetic, tiny excuses for French pastries that lived on the shelves of Harris Teeter. No, they were Costco croissants.
In the wake of our horror, I urged my dog up the stairs and to her bed. From there, I methodically rewrapped the end of her tail, and the job was made much easier by her swollen stomach. Later that night, when I attempted to take her outside one last time, she merely lifted her head, gave me a flat stare, and flopped back over. It seemed that the day had been just a bit too much for her to handle. So, I decided I valued my dog’s opinion of me and deigned to let her rest.
Needless to say, we now ensure that any Costco croissants that make their way into our house are kept well away from the edge of the counter, and that every time my dog comes in through the back door, her tail is clear of the doorway before it slams shut.