Tuesday, July 17, 2012

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.

*BOGO Update*:  Mega congrats to Pat, Alison, Christine and Jennifer!!  Ladies, check your inbox for details about your prize.

UPDATE:  I'm giving away a $10.00 Amazon gift card to one lucky commenter.  Plus, if you get a moment, go check out my post at this great new website, Gimme a Little Kiss

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.

BOGO Update!!  I'll be announcing the winners of the BOGO contest later today on this blog, so swing by this evening for the news!


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.

CC
 






21 comments:

Zita said...

No hubby stories, sorry. I'm afraid I would have been there helping hubby in that situation. Although I hope I would have stepped in sooner. I'm pretty sure my message server for getting mission statements is faster than hubby's :-)

Meb Bryant said...

In my "hubby story," I stabbed him only once, but in my defense, I thought he was about to strike me. Anyway...the statue of limitations has run out.

I love your husband! Maybe even more than you, but in this case I am TEAM CHRISTIE. And may I suggest Steve gets his eyes checked. English Bulldog?

Terri Osburn said...

That is so obviously a pit bull! One charged me and pooch a few months ago and I overreacted, lifting my then 6lb dog clear off the ground. But we've since "met" Daisy on a calmer day and she's sweet as can be. Huge, but sweet.

There's another dog in the neighborhood that looks more like a Retriever/Sheep dog mix and that one scares my little one much more. Goes to show, you can't judge by the breed.

Kudos to your hubby, but I'd have killed him too for standing there and just watching!

Unknown said...

Thanks for the laughs, Christie! I was just at the nail salon getting my nail fixed and telling the lady next to me about your blogs, your husband and your son and laughing while reiterating the heating pad story.

I was thrilled when I got to Starbucks, booted up my computer and found another hysterical blog to share with friends. The lady at the nail solon wrote down both of your pen names, promised to check you out and buy the whole set of your YA books for her daughter. LOL

Unknown said...

Um... That unknown person is me, Robin Kaye--who now must find out why google insists on me going incognito.

Loretta Wheeler said...

Hubby story, (I have several, but only one flashed to the top immediately) it's from when we were on a trip through Dallas. Hubs has macho issues, or as they say now, control issues. Sweet guy, but he does have this "thing" about being in charge. Anyhoo, he had both of our tickets for our flight. I demanded (sweetly of course:);) that I hold my own ticket so I'd know which terminal I was supposed to go to, just in case we were separated. After several "sashay's" with the topic, I finally had my ticket in my hand. Thank God. Our transit car appeared as soon as I had it, hubs stepped inside, and as I was tugging my luggage to squeeze in beside him, the doors slammed shut. His face was priceless...that OMG moment plastered all over it. My face, well, I tried to temper it down a little, but "I told you so" was all over my kisser:)
Men, gotta love 'em...AND keep a supply of valium around.

Sarah S. said...

I'm a little unsure how you mistake a pitbull for an english bulldog, but oh well. :)

My hubby brought one stray dog home, but luckily we were able to get a hold of the owner within a few hours and it was cool enough outside to leave him out there so luckily no piss was taken inside.

Michele L. said...

Oh my gosh! English Bulldog? Does he need glasses? LOL!
My hubby is constantly pulling stunts. He makes me laugh until I am almost peeing my pants! His parents had a pekingnese that lost an eye is an accident. Anyway, the dog loved vacuum cleaners and when his mom got it out, it would hop on and ride it around the floor with her vacuuming. One eyed Mike sails again! Then she would get her broom out and Mike would try to hop on it, and she would swish him around the floor. One eyed Mike was one swishy dog!

catslady said...

Instead of thinking of a mission statement I thought you were going to say he was standing there laughing - so glad he wasn't lol but it must have been tempting. I'm sure I have stories but I'm blank at the moment but my hubby is an animal lover too and although we've had two dogs, due to some strays/ferals that started multiplying 20 years ago, he is now the biggest softy when it comes to cats although he denied it for a long time. Can you imagine living with someone that hates animals - I've known a few and it's a wonderful gauge to judge people by!

Alison B said...

Omg that is an awesome story. Thank you for being such great people!!

Reneec23 said...

No hubby stories, but one time my sister and I were on a daily walk, and we cut through a cemetery. Suddenly, three big dogs came charging and barking at us. My sister jumped, screamed and freaked out. She tried to hide behind me. I just kept reassuring her that the dogs weren't gonna hurt us. At this point the dogs were circling us and barking (which sounded suspiciously like laughing). I lead my sister out of the cemetery, and the dogs headed back in the direction they first came from. My sister never let us walk through that cemetary again.

Na said...

Hey that's a pitbull! A cute one at that :) I have no hubby stories but one day I'll be sure to keep good tabs on them.

I remember there used to be the smallest, yippiest chihuahua on the street that used to chased me down whenever I walked by. The small growls and barring of death really scared me and I had to forgo shorts and capris for the longest if I knew it was in the area.

Anonymous said...

Great story! Loved it. Actually when you and Lady finally escaped the misunderstood love tap from the testosterone fueled bunny, I was certain you were going to write that you looked back and saw Hubby and the bunny on the curb like old pals. No, I don't have a hubby and it's times like this I count my blessings. Mary Louise

Tori Lennox said...

No hubby stories here. I'm glad you guys were able to reunite him with his owner. :)

Barbara E. said...

That was a great story. I don't have any "hubby" stories, but I did rescue a stray dog in my neighborhood right after I moved in. I stuck him in the garage until I could find something to use as a leash. He had a collar but no tags to identify where he lived. I found a leash and began walking him down the street where I ran into his owner and reunited them. The next time he ran away, I knew where to take him. :D

Kristi said...

I don't have anything remotely like your stories. Thank God! LOL

Mine just likes to go out and buy big ticket items and bring them home.

Two years ago it was a 37 foot camper, two months ago patio furniture and last month a new refrigerator.

I love him dearly but it would be nice if he consulted with me first.

Cheryl said...

No hubby so no hubby stories. I'll live vicariously through your hubby stories cause they are stinkin' hilarious. I've turned one co-worker onto your books. I think because I kept telling her she had to read Christie Craig until she figured she'd read one just to shut me up. Now we both read them and share which parts had us laughing out loud. Too much fun!

Quilt Lady said...

I got bit by a dog when I was a teenager so when I go for a walk I carry a big stick with me, sorry don't trust dogs anymore. All I can say about my hubby is I had back surgery a couple of weeks ago and he took vacation time to help take care of me after but he did say before the surgery that if I could walk I should be able to cook after the surgery. Sure enough about four days after surgery he had me in the kitchen cooking and I think he spent his vacation time mostly sleeping in his chair, so I am not very happy with him right now.

donnas said...

No stories but I have to admit that would be a hard one to top too.

Christie Craig said...

Hey...

Thank you all for posting. Yesterday I was out of town, being filmed on a talk show. Now I'm laughing at all your stories. Hubby has also been keeping tabs, saying, see this one agrees with me! LOL.

Now to put the names in the hat and to announce the winners.

Seriously, thank you all for stopping in.

CC
Seriously, thank you for supporting me.

CC

Unknown said...

I love Street Dance and I have watched StreetDance 2 movie which is great! But Street dancing With Pit Bull is just a great.

Street Dance