Street Dancing with a Pit Bull

Street Dancing with a Pit Bull

(Warning:  Long post, but it will be worth it!)

Winners!! Today's winners for the Blame it on Texas ARC are:  Cheryl and Michele.  And one person, Terriosburn wins a bound copy of Whispers at Moonrise.  Please email your addresses at christie@christie(-)craig(dot)com.

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Contest!  Contest!  Today I’m giving away two copies of Blame it on Texas.  Winner will be posted on top of this blog tomorrow.  Make sure you come back and check.

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Hubby did it again!!  Yeah, what would I blog about if I wasn’t married to that man?  Here’s another question. Why isn’t he permanently in the dog house?  Wait, I know the answer to that one.  It’s because he somehow manages to come out of every situation looking . . . not-so-bad . . . and here's the kicker . . . almost heroic.  But oh . . . there are moments he’s gotta be glad I don’t pack heat, because he’d be a goner.  And in this instance, so would the pit bull.  Here’s what happened.

I walk an hour a day, about five days a week, with a friend who lives a few blocks from me.  And as soon as Lady, the Craig’s fourteen hundred dollar junkyard dog, learned what I was doing when I left each morning, she decided it was her duty to come with me.  But we all know walking a dog and walking to get your heart rate up and to relieve stress due to living with my hubby, are two different things.  So Hubby started coming with me each morning for a few blocks; and when we met up with my friend Susan, he would turn back around and take Lady home.

That morning was like most; Lady was full of pep, I was half asleep, and hubby was just waiting for an opportunity to do something that would get him blogged about.  As we cut down one block, I have lady’s leash.  I see Susan walking toward us a couple blocks down the street.  I guess I was watching her and I didn’t see the pit bull. 

Let me tell you, I’m not afraid of dogs, but when a beady-eyed, un-neutered, dangerous-looking pit charges you and the beloved pet you’ve already spent fourteen hundred dollars on, it’s pee-in-your pants scary and you discover dance moves that you didn’t even know you had.  You even discover vocal chords you’ve never used. 

So try to imagine it.  Me, screaming, dancing, Lady on a leash desperately trying to evade the dog, leash getting caught between my legs while dancing and screaming, all the while the pit bull continues to chase.  Pit bull darts left, I dart right, Lady darts between my legs.  I nearly fall on my face with the leash wrapped around my knees.

Oh . . . you may be wondering what Hubby was doing during all this.  It was the question that went through my freaking mind!  So somewhere in between gasping for breath and doing the dance moves, I spied Hubby from the corner of my eye.  He was just standing there, arms crossed over his chest, watching.  WATCHING!

I screamed at him, using my newly discovered vocal chords, “Do something, damn it!”

"One question" he said.  Yes, he literally thought that was the time for questions.  “Is this the dog that came at you before?”

Now . . . it wasn’t the same dog, but how the hell is that important?  It was the dog who was coming at me now.  So I screamed again, “Do something, damn it!”  Hey . . . when a writer finds a good piece of dialogue that works, she can reuse it.

Finally, he stepped in.  He positioned himself between Lady and me and the pit bull.  But the dog did a fake left and got around him.  Hubby did a quick right, Lady darted between my legs again, and I, once again, discovered some new moves.  At one point, Lady and I were wrapped around a mailbox and then all of us, Hubby included, were back in the middle of the street.  But at least now I’m not the only one dancing in public making an idiot out of myself.

Hubby finally snagged the dog’s collar.  Lady and I took off down the street.  Now, I was a bit concerned about Hubby, so I looked over my shoulder to make sure he wasn’t getting mauled by the pit bull.   

Nope, pit bull and Hubby were just centered in the middle of the street, like old friends, watching Lady and me make our getaway.  “What do you want me to do?” he calls out.

“Wait until we get far enough away, and then let go of the damn dog collar and run like hell!” I screamed.

Now… I know people don’t believe this shit happens to me, but as I said, Susan was walking down the street and she witnessed the whole thing.  When I got to her, the look on her face said it all.  She was seriously concerned.  Oh, not about me, but about being friends with me.  I mean, since we’ve been friends, I've landed her in the hospital once and got her lost in our own neighborhood.  Not that either of them were my fault, mind you.

But being the kind person she is, she suggested we speed walk back to her house and she’d drive me and Lady back home before we went for our walk.  She got one scared dog and one scared friend in her leather-seated Jaguar, probably hoping Lady hadn’t peed on herself during the excitement (or me, for that matter) and she drove to my house.

Right as she pulled up into my drive, I got this weird feeling.  “Oh crap!” I said.

“What?” Susan asked. 

“I’ll bet my hubby brought that darn Pit Bull home with him.”

Susan, who is a dog lover and rather fond of my hubby, looked at me and what she said made me question being friends with her.  “Well, if the dog wasn’t vicious, what else could he have done?”

“I liked my idea better,” I told her.  “Let his collar go and run like hell!”   Anyway, Susan held Lady by the leash as I went inside and made sure the dog wasn’t there. 

So what do you think?  Do you think my hubby was out of his mind enough to bring a Pit Bull home?  How good would the story be if he didn’t, right?

Anyway, I walked in and called out.  “Hey?”

He called back. “Don’t be mad at me!”

Oh, I was beyond mad.  That’s when I would have shot him if I’d had a gun. 

He said, “He’s really not a bad dog.”

I said, “He charged at me and Lady.”

“I think he just wanted to check her out.  You know, cute female dog, studly male dog thing.”

“He’s a Pit Bull!” I insisted.

“No,” he said. “He’s just an English bull dog.  And he has a collar with the vet's number.  I’ve already called and got the number of the owner and left a message.”

“You better hope he calls,” I said, studying the dog, wanting to think he was an English bull dog, because that’s the kind of dog I have in my Hotter in Texas series, but I just couldn’t buy it.  Anyway, he locked the dog away and I brought in Lady.  Then I remembered, “Why did you take so damn long to help me back there?”

(This is another moment when I would have shot him if I’d been toting.)  He looked me right in the eyes and said, “I was brainstorming my mission statement.”

“MISSION STATEMENT?”  I found those new vocal chords again.

“Yeah, I didn’t know what I needed to do,” he said.  “Protect you.  Protect Lady.  Or protect myself.  Or if anyone needed protecting at all.  The dog wasn’t growling and the hair on his back wasn’t standing up.”

“No, but my hair was standing up!”  I took off for a walk before I started planning to skip buying a gun and just go for instant gratification and resort to using a knife on Hubby.

When I got back an hour later from my walk, Hubby informed me that the dog was sweet, hadn’t even growled once.  But the dog owner still hadn’t called and dog piss was all over my living room.  So I was pissed, not being sweet, and I started growling.

And let me just tell you right out, I was not charmed by the unwanted visitor.  He kept looking at me like . . . like I was lunch and he was hungry.  

Now . . . Hubby had an appointment he had to make, and he informed me that although it was too hot outside for man or beast, if I was uncomfortable, he’d put the English bull dog in the dog run in the backyard.  “Good idea,” I told him, I didn’t want to be alone with “whatever kind of dog it was,” and I didn’t want the two dogs to have another run-in.  I’d already done all the dancing I wanted to do in one day.

So Hubby put the dog,  a bowl of water and food in the dog run and went to get ready.  Twenty minutes later, I’m at my desk and I hear . . . “Pant, pant, pant" and "Grrr.”

I looked up from my computer screen to see a hot, pissed-off hungry Pit Bull in my study, (yes, I was back to calling him a Pit Bull) staring at me and my sweet dog, Lady.  The short muscled dog had broken out of the dog run and pushed open the backdoor.  Yeah, our backdoor can be pushed open if it’s not locked, (one of the many things on Hubby’s to-do list that hasn’t gotten done.)  I only thought I was finished with dancing for the day.

I commenced to do some fancy footwork to keep the two dogs apart and reconnected with my newly found vocal chords, hoping Hubby would hear and come to the rescue.  Much to Hubby’s credit, he came running.  While he got the dog locked in one room, because he said the dog was just too hot to be outside, I got busy finding which knife I wanted to use when I killed Hubby.

Hubby, smart man that he is, left rather quickly, and I was stuck listening to a Pit Bull locked in one room while waiting for a Pit Bull’s owner to call. 

My son arrived home and he let the dog out of the room and played with him, assuring me that he’s not a Pit Bull, and he’s just misunderstood.  Like I’m gonna buy that!

Fast forward eight hours.  Hubby’s back home, I haven’t gotten a phone call and there’s a little more piss in my living room.  While I had learned not to cringe when the dog looked at me, I was not letting my precious Lady dog around the beast.  And Hubby, like myself, was getting worried about not hearing from the misunderstood dog’s owner.

He called the vet back, got the address of the owner—which was odd because he lived about ten miles away--and then Hubby left his tenth message on the guy’s telephone.  Oh, yeah, he also asks the vet assistant.  “He’s an English Bulldog right?” 

The vet assistant said, “Uh, no, he’s a pit bull.”

Hubby, again, showing his intelligence, hid all the knives in the house.  Then desperate and thinking maybe someone was dog sitting, he calls the dog liaison in our neighborhood.   The woman immediately asked Hubby to hang on and puts him on a three-way call with a panicking dog owner who was in the middle of moving, and whose dog had been staying at his mother-in-law’s.  Hence the man didn’t get our phone messages and was already making signs about the dog.  Though, why he didn’t think to call the vet is beyond me.

“He’s a good dog,” the man kept saying.  “He’s not your normal Pit Bull.  He’s my pride and joy, please don’t hurt him.”

Hubby assured the concerned man that his beloved pet was fine and no harm had come to him.  Hubby even said, “’Most' of the family has fallen in love with him.”  And he cut his eyes to me. 

Right!  Like I should feel bad!  The man showed up, dog and owner share a sweet touching “together again” moment, like in one of those in a Lifetime movie, and it nearly brought tears to my eyes.  The man offered a reward, which my hubby refused.  “It’s reward enough to just get a lost dog back with his owner,” he assured the man.

He shook our hands and told my husband.  “Not very many people would have done this.   You guys are special people.”

So okay, I wasn’t so special, and Hubby didn’t actually out me.  Hubby was the . . . hero, and maybe I overreacted just a bit, but not really.  The dog could have been as bad ass as he looked, and he did pee in my living room.  

I guess you could say the moral of the story is: all’s well that ends well.  But looking a little deeper, there are a few other lessons to be learned: You can’t judge a book by its cover, dogs by their breed, or people by their color or creed.

After the dog was gone, and my need to kill had lessened, I realized I was lucky to be married to a man who has a big enough heart to care about a stray dog—even one from a breed with a bad reputation.   See why I can’t put Hubby in the doghouse permanently?  Not that he doesn’t deserve to go there for a while!  Brainstorming his mission statement, my butt!!!

So how about you guys?  Any hubby stories you want to share?  Don’t forget to leave a comment to be entered to win one of the two copies of Blame it on Texas.

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