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PrintA dog bites the hand that feeds him
Connie Cronley shares her loved ones' reactions.
This is a little story about a dog bite. And the ensuing reactions of friends and family.
One lazy Saturday evening, my dog Bingo and I were sharing an order of barbecue ribs. I would eat my part, then hold the bone in my fist so he could chomp off the soft end with his back teeth.
Eat, eat. Chomp. Eat, eat. Chomp. It was a pleasant routine.
And then.
Oh, how many dark chapters of our lives begin with those two words — “and then.”
And then I got distracted by something I was reading in the Cherokee newspaper, held the bone out absent-mindedly, got my finger in his mouth and chomp.
I thought he had bitten off the end of my finger. You talk about something hurting. You talk about carrying on!
I called my ex-husband, who lives nearby, and told him what had happened.
I said, “I need for you to take me to Urgent Care.”
He said, “Oh, just put some antibiotic on it.”
I said, “I need for you to take me to Urgent Care.”
He said, “What do you think they can do that you can’t do yourself? It’s not like one of your cat bites. A dog’s mouth is cleaner. It’s not going to get infected.”
I said, “I need to go to Urgent Care.”
He wanted to know where Urgent Care was. He wanted to know how late it was open. I told him I had checked all of that and we needed to go now.
He said, “I’m watching golf. Can’t you call around and find one closer?”
Eventually, he did drive me to Urgent Care, where the doctor looked at my finger and said, “Boy, he really nailed you, didn’t he?”
Now, if there’s anything we do not want, it is for our doctors to be excited about our illnesses or injuries. We want them nonchalant. Bored almost. We want them to say, “Oh, it’s not as bad as you think.”
What this doctor said was, “Wow. How big is this dog?”
After injections and X-rays and stitches, I was sent home with a fistful of prescriptions. I told my ex-husband that we needed to stop at a pharmacy to get them filled.
He said, “Oh, brother. How long is this going to take? I need to get home.”
The next day I began telling friends and family about the dog bite.
My friend Anna, a pianist, said, “Which hand? Which finger? Did you call in a hand specialist?”
My friend Joe, a writer, said, “Are you going to lose your nail? Can you type? You’re a writer — you have to have use of your hands.”
Another friend said, “Did they give you good pain meds? Because if they didn’t, I have a cabinet full I can share.”
My friend Michele said, “How gruesome. I would be more sympathetic if you hadn’t told me last week to stop being such a Southern belle and complaining about all of my aches and pains.”
My friend David, a retired architect, saw my first finger, bandaged, in a metal cage and held aloft, pointing heavenward. He asked what happened, and when I told him, he said, “What! You fed your dog rib bones? You could have killed him! Never do that.”
My sister said, “Did the dog get to finish his bone?”
A little boy named Deon looked closely at the black stitches through the fingernail and said, “Gross. Can I show my little brother?”
I have learned, yet again, that I am not cut out for multi-tasking. I cannot feed the dog treats while reading a newspaper any more than I can trim my own bangs while drinking chardonnay. I’ve tried both actions with grim results.
P.S.: I don’t know what happened to the rib bone the dog and I were eating. I lost interest in it. But I can report that both the dog and I are alive and well.
