Before I tell you today’s tale of woe, you should know one thing: I do not do blood. In all honesty, I’m not good around emergencies of any kind. Ever. At all. Even my son, my only child knows that if he’s cut himself, he should find the Band-Aids on his own, because his mother is absolutely no help whatsoever.
Sadly, my dog, No-no Lulu, didn’t get that memo. I’m thinking it’s mainly because she doesn’t ever listen to a word I say, unless it’s “walk” or “treat” and sometimes “no, no, you go potty outside.” On the other hand, it also could be because she’s a dog and therefore doesn’t speak much English. Frankly, I think this could go either way.
In any event, because No-no Lulu doesn’t understand that I don’t do blood, she strolled into the house the other day covered in the stuff. And when I say “covered,” I mean it looked like she had just gotten home from a zombie apocalypse, rather than just coming inside from a 10-minute jaunt around the backyard.
Of course, I see the blood – but I’m not sure really what it is – and I think, “What the heck is that … OH MY GOD YOU ARE COVERED IN BLOOD.” Yes, I said that in all caps. I think it should be obvious to everyone reading this by now that I was completely freaking out.
No-no Lulu, however, was not freaking out. In fact, she looked at me as if she were saying, “Oh hey, got any treats?” And then she strolls in the general direction of the pantry where the treats are kept, pausing only to shake her entire body so vigorously that blood splatters everywhere. Within two seconds, my kitchen looks like a scene out of “CSI: Gilroy.”
And that’s when I react the way any fairly reasonable person who does not do blood reacts: I scream. This causes No-no Lulu to halt in her pursuit of treats, turn around and run down the hallway, pausing only to shake even more blood on the walls and floor.
At this point, she is heading straight toward No Man’s Land. Yes, the living room. Where nobody ever goes, but for some reason holds the only furniture in our home that does not look like it escaped from a fraternity house. So I run after her, still screaming, because honestly? That’s what I do when I’m panicked. Or when I see blood.
And yes, I do know that they are the same thing.
Anyway, by now the other dog wants to get in on the fun, so Kirby joins me in chasing No-no Lulu into the living room, nearly tripping me in her haste to get there first. Fortunately, Kirby’s insane barking stops No-no Lulu right before she jumps on the couch and I am able to grab her collar and take her back to the kitchen where I wonder what the heck I’m supposed to do with my horror monster dog.
And then I make the mistake of trying to clean her up. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to clean blood off a wiggly dog, but it’s not a good plan. It just makes her shake more. And that makes more blood everywhere. Oh, and have I mentioned that because of my injured arm I can’t mop or vacuum and so I have housecleaners who had just scrubbed my house to a sparkly clean a mere two hours before?
Yeah. So there’s that.
Anyway, I took her to the vet and it turns out, she got caught in a rose bush and had a thorn in her ear. Also? Apparently, ears bleed a lot. Frankly, I’m shocked she had blood left in her body, since it appeared to me that most of it was on the walls in the kitchen.
At this point, I’d love to tell you that after all this, I came home, cleaned everything up and my blood phobia disappeared and I’m now planning to apply to medical school.
Yeah, so that’s not happening. Ever. At all. On the plus side, though, No-no Lulu won’t go within 5 feet of a rose bush. So all isn’t lost. At least someone in our family learned a lesson.
