A dear reader mentioned to me recently that she missed reading
about Lucy.
A dear reader mentioned to me recently that she missed reading about Lucy.
Lucy, in case you’ve forgotten as I sometimes do, is our dear miniature dachshund. It’s true I haven’t written about our pup in some time. Ever since our little one, Miss Emma, was born, Lady Lucy, as she is formally known, has gotten the short end of the proverbial chewy stick.
I started wondering lately, should we get Lucy a canine companion? Maybe another dacshie to play with?
Perhaps then Lucy wouldn’t feel like the low pup on the totem pole. Perhaps then she wouldn’t slink away when Emma waddles toward her. Perhaps then I wouldn’t feel so guilty about neglecting her.
We pet owners have good intentions. We bring our little adopted dogs, cats and hamsters home. We feed them, bathe them, play with them. We buy them expensive pet toys, buy them the fancy food the vet recommends. But sometimes our pets go astray. They go awry.
They get out. They fall in the pool. They eat our leftovers. And sometimes even the freshly baked ham we just pulled from the oven.
These were some of the pet tales – no pun intended – woven around our dinner table over this past Thanksgiving weekend. I discovered that, like me, our family members have allowed their pets to fall off the radar screen.
Take Chris’ Aunt Bunny and Uncle Dick for instance. They must have had just about every pet under the sun. Unfortunately, for their menagerie of cats, dogs and gerbils, they were under the care of their three boys.
No one seems to remember how their gerbil came to fall into the swimming pool. But everyone agrees that it was Eric’s idea to pop him into the clothes dryer to get the poor guy dry. When that didn’t seem to work, the boys tried the microwave. For about four seconds. Somehow, the gerbil survived.
I had a close call once, too. Though my pet boo-boo was accidental. One day while watching my nephew, Brandon, and my parents’ dog, Rusty, a big block of Ghiradelli’s finest disappeared. One moment the chocolate was sitting in the middle of the table, an hour later all that remained was a crumpled wrapper and Rusty dog licking his chops. I knew that dogs and chocolate don’t mix, and I had to do something. Knowing Rusty loses his kibble in a moving vehicle, I grabbed my car keys and stuffed us all in the car.
But wouldn’t you know it, after driving around for about a half-hour, Rusty still hadn’t gotten sick, but I was about to.
I’m happy to report that all Rusty got from that unpleasant experience was an upset tummy.
What is it about food and animals? Their eyes are always bigger than their stomachs.
And other times, they don’t eat enough for their own good. Which brings me to my last story.
When my sister was about 5, she had this white hamster that she absolutely adored. That summer, we visited my Grandma in Ohio for a week. My parents filled the hamster’s cage with enough food and water to carry it through a month. Or so they thought.
My father arrived home a few days ahead of everyone else to find the hamster motionless, lying next to its uneaten food.
My Dad didn’t want to upset my sister, so he sped off to the pet store in search of the hamster’s twin.
No such luck. He found a hamster with white fur – much longer white fur. But he brought it home anyway, hoping for the best.
A few days passed and we returned home. My sister walked through the front door, pointed right at the stand-in hamster and exclaimed, “Look his hair grew!”
Well, this story had a happy ending after all. While we can’t make all of our pets happy, sometimes we can make their owners happy.
In the meantime, I know that our Lucy will survive. She’ll continue to topple over the trash and wait under Emma’s high chair for the morsels of food to drop.
And maybe one day, she’ll have her own canine buddy to pick on and she’ll no longer be the lone pup on the bottom of the totem pole.
