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I just called both my folks' numbers and got no answer, so assumed they'd forgot to charge the phones and called the house.
My grandfather answered. (He lives next door and they have the same phone number.) Seems my dad is in the hospital having a hernia fixed.
Also, he had to tell me that he had accidentally run over the dog yesterday.
He got out and looked at her, and she was breathing heavily, obviously in pain, and too injured to survive. So, my dad had to shoot her. (That's what you do when you live 15 miles over horrendously bumpy roads from the nearest vet.)
Ginger was a good dog; my parents got her when I was still married, maybe 10 years ago. You know how sometimes people will move, and leave a broom there, or a chair they don't want to lift, or something? Well, some friends of mine moved into a house and discovered that the previous tenants had left their dog. They were all about keeping her, until they figured out that she could jump the fence of the backyard. So they got a chain for her, and she managed to wrap it around the guttering and rip half of it down. At that point, they decided they couldn't afford to keep a vigorously active dog in a too-small yard, and begged all their friends to take her or they'd have to have her put to sleep.
Well, Father's Day was coming up, so I stuffed the dog in my station wagon, drove the 100 miles to my parents' house, and told my dad, "Happy Father's Day! Here's a dog!"
We let Ginger out of the car and she looked around at the 80 acres, and took off running. She looped out about a quarter mile, made a big circle, came back, and sat down panting. We figured she just needed to make sure it wasn't all a trick.
Anyways, in the past few years, Ginger had been suffering from arthritis and having trouble getting around, and my mom had been giving her baby aspirins, and this winter they had decided that it was getting worse and it would be Ginger's last-- and that at the end of the fall this next year they would take her in to be put to sleep, rather than watch her suffer.
So, my parents are down to one dog, Jake, who is spotted and hyper-energetic, and no cats at all. It's a sad, sad day.
On the schedule today: at 9, I'm going to the bank and then to the Department of Vital Records to get a copy of my damn birth certificate (which went missing again) to give a copy of it to my employer in lieu of my Social Security card, which would require waiting for the stupid thing in the mail. I'll probably take the kid with me, for fun.
My grandfather answered. (He lives next door and they have the same phone number.) Seems my dad is in the hospital having a hernia fixed.
Also, he had to tell me that he had accidentally run over the dog yesterday.
He got out and looked at her, and she was breathing heavily, obviously in pain, and too injured to survive. So, my dad had to shoot her. (That's what you do when you live 15 miles over horrendously bumpy roads from the nearest vet.)
Ginger was a good dog; my parents got her when I was still married, maybe 10 years ago. You know how sometimes people will move, and leave a broom there, or a chair they don't want to lift, or something? Well, some friends of mine moved into a house and discovered that the previous tenants had left their dog. They were all about keeping her, until they figured out that she could jump the fence of the backyard. So they got a chain for her, and she managed to wrap it around the guttering and rip half of it down. At that point, they decided they couldn't afford to keep a vigorously active dog in a too-small yard, and begged all their friends to take her or they'd have to have her put to sleep.
Well, Father's Day was coming up, so I stuffed the dog in my station wagon, drove the 100 miles to my parents' house, and told my dad, "Happy Father's Day! Here's a dog!"
We let Ginger out of the car and she looked around at the 80 acres, and took off running. She looped out about a quarter mile, made a big circle, came back, and sat down panting. We figured she just needed to make sure it wasn't all a trick.
Anyways, in the past few years, Ginger had been suffering from arthritis and having trouble getting around, and my mom had been giving her baby aspirins, and this winter they had decided that it was getting worse and it would be Ginger's last-- and that at the end of the fall this next year they would take her in to be put to sleep, rather than watch her suffer.
So, my parents are down to one dog, Jake, who is spotted and hyper-energetic, and no cats at all. It's a sad, sad day.
On the schedule today: at 9, I'm going to the bank and then to the Department of Vital Records to get a copy of my damn birth certificate (which went missing again) to give a copy of it to my employer in lieu of my Social Security card, which would require waiting for the stupid thing in the mail. I'll probably take the kid with me, for fun.
