Animal Insting

Well, yesterday I was so busy telling you about my Big, Scary Adventure that I didn't have time to tell you about Mom's adventure, which happened on Monday.  And Mom's adventure was that she got BIT BY A DOG when she was at the Humane Society.  And the way it happened was that Mom had been playing with dogs for a while, and then she got ready to go eat lunch, and she went in the Quarantine Room, where she is not really supposed to go, but she just stepped inside the door so she could tell Aunt Joyce, who takes care of the dogs on Mondays, that she was going to lunch.

A dog who is thinking about biting someone!

And Aunt Joyce was cleaning out runs in the Quarantine Room, and she had one dog out of his run because she was cleaning the run.  And this dog's name was Mars, and he was  a feral dog.  So when Mom came in the room, which is a pretty small room, Mars was in a corner, kind of behind a big trash can, and he backed up even farther and barked at Mom, but she is used to having dogs bark at her.  So she just said something soothing and cheerful like, "Oh, are you afraid of me?" and then she didn't pay any more attention to Mars because she was just going to talk to Aunt Joyce, but all of a sudden, Mars ran out from behind the trash can and bit Mom really hard on the knee and then ran back behind the trash can again.

Mom says it feels worse than it looks!

Mom said it really, really hurt when Mars bit her, and she backed out of the room in a hurry, and Aunt Joyce pushed the trash can over in front of Mars to make sure he didn't run out again.  So Mom had this kind of puncture wound on the left side of her knee and a bruise on the back of her knee, from the two places where Mars' canine teeth hit her.  And the wound was bleeding and it hurt a lot whenever Mom bent her knee.  Then Aunt Joyce and Aunt Jessie, who takes care of the kitties, helped Mom clean the wound and bandage it and everything like that.

Then pretty soon everybody at the shelter started finding out about how Mom got bit, and Mom kept saying it was all her fault because she shouldn't have gone into the Quarantine Room.  Then Aunt Karen, who is in charge of all the adoptions and stuff, told Mom that Mars was supposed to go to another group where someone was good at working with feral dogs.  But after Mars bit Mom, he now has to be kept at the Humane Society for another 10 days.  Mom thinks Aunt Karen was mad at her, even though Aunt Karen said she wasn't, but Mom is on the Board of Directors, so Aunt Karen can't say what she really thinks.  Ha!

Anyway, when Mom came home from the shelter, she walked kind of funny, and all of us dogs sniffed at her leg a lot.  Then in the evening, her knee hurt more, and she really, really walked funny, especially when she was going up or down the stairs, and that made all of us kind of nervous because we were afraid she would fall down and land on one of us and crush us.  So mostly, Mom sat around all evening with ice packs on her knee and watched TV.  Then we all went to bed.

Oh, and remember when I hurt my toenail last May and then it got all icky, and Aunt Cheryl gave Mom some cephalexin for me to take?  Well, Mom still had some of that left, so she started taking it after she got her dog bite.  And then on Tuesday, Mom went to see the doctor, and the doctor gave her a prescription for more cephalexin and also gave her a tetanus shot because Mom was supposed to have got one last year, but she forgot to get it.  And yesterday Mom said her knee felt better, and she even mowed the front yard.  And she doesn't limp anymore except maybe a little when she is going up or down stairs.  So we think Mom is going to be all normal again soon, which is good because we don't like it when Mom is not being her regular self.

Gabe's toothwork!

This was not the first time Mom got bitten by a dog.  Mostly, it was Gabe who bit her, and he's done it twice.  The last time he bit her was right after he got attacked by the greyhounds, so he was hurting and all crazy and snarly like he gets after he's in a fight, and Mom tried to unhook his leash, and he bit her on the hand.  But that was her own fault because she knows how he gets, so she should have been more careful.

Well, I was going to tell you a whole bunch of facts and other fascinating information about dog bites, but I have already spent way too much time just writing about Mom's dog bite.  So tomorrow I will try to tell you all the other stuff, like for instance that 4.7 million dog bites happen every year in the U.S.  And now, after Mom's horrible adventure, that number is 4.7 million and one!