Do any of you want a dog? Cheap? She's a gentle 8 year old black lab-Shepherd cross with selective listening. She's a maniac, but she's good with kids. Look, I'll pay you to take her.
OK, not really, but I was seriously thinking about it after our drive home from the city on Sunday. The kids were in the backseat, and Sally was behind them in the back. (It's a hatchback, so it's not a trunk...what do you call it?) I stick a laundry basket between the seat back and the roof, so that the dog stays put, which had always worked, but as we went over the rumble strips on the ramp from the 401 onto the 400, (one big highway to another) the dog went berserk. I'm assuming that the noisy grooved pavement is there to wake up sleepy truckers and keep them on the road, but I hate it. Anyway, the dog got scared and went insane and overturned the laws of physics to squeeze herself through a space she certainly didn't fit. She howled and squealed and got stuck halfway through, waking up the Princess when her nails got stuck in my baby girl's hat. Thank God she was wearing that toque, because without it she would have been scalped. So there I was, alone in the car with the kids, on the ramp between two major highways with no where to pull over, a psycho dog on top of my daughter's head, and nothing I could do about it.
By the time I got to the next exit, the dog was sitting happily on the Princess' lap. The Princess was still sobbing loudly, not surprising really, considering the way she'd been woken up and the fact that Sally outweighs her by half, but I was afraid to open the car door on the side of the highway in case the dog bolted and I couldn't hold her. I was mad as hell, but I didn't want to watch her get flattened by a car.
I cooed to the Princess and drove as quickly as I could to the first parking lot I found, which was thankfully attached to a Timmy's, and struggled to lift 80 lbs of madly squirming dog back in the trunk. (Wishing it WAS a trunk!) I tied her leash to the anchor strap of Bad's car seat, giving her no room to maneuver back over the seats (or more than 3 inches in any direction), cuddled the Princess until she was calm, and went through the drive-thru for much needed coffee (for me) and tim-bits (for the Princess). With his usual aplomb, Bad slept through the whole thing. Then I went home and googled kennels, because there is no way I am taking the dog with us on a car trip ever again.
Free advice? If your kids want a pet, spring for a goldfish.
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5 comments:
I know people LOVE their dogs but they just seem like so much trouble! Now I can add "goes crazy in trunk and ends up on kid's lap" to the long list of reasons I don't want anything other than a goldfish (and I don't even want Goldie!)
um, yeah. quite the adventure! Glad everything ended up okay. did you roll up the rim???
oh my, sorry but that is a really funny story! Except for the stress part LOL
Holy Moly! Well, my post on my blog might make you feel a bit better. Check it out and send me your email address, ok? :)
Oh boy, what excitement...that you don't really need. Poor Princess!
Poor you!
And this, this is why when the kids ask if we would consider a dog, I point them over to Goldie's direction (and yes, that IS what the girlie named her fish!).
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