Two nights ago, we very nearly had a disaster of apocalyptic proportions in the TDD household.
Bella the English bulldog has been getting out of the back yard lately, but we don’t know how. She generally just goes and lays on the front porch, or at the least, lays in the grass in the front yard, which is not fenced.
April and I are at odds over Bella. Now don’t get me wrong, I love her. I adopted her along with all the other girls in this house. But she’s a dumbass. I mean that in the nicest way possible.
Her biggest issue is, she has no control over her overwhelming desire to chase shiny things. Reflections, lights, shadows. She’ll chase the shadow of birds flying in the air, on the ground. If you have something shiny or sparkly that reflects light on the walls or ceilings, she’ll lose her freaking mind. And she’s fat and out of shape, so when she goes into these fits, she almost passes out from the exertion. And don’t even get me started on lawnmowers or fireworks. When Doc was alive, he’d just sit and stare at her like “What the HELL are you doing?”
Well, something else that really gets her wound up like a 13-year-old girl at a One Direction concert is….headlights. And that’s a BAD thing, if your fat and out of shape English Bully can’t seem to control her demons.
So on Tuesday night, I’m putting up a loft in Abby’s room, when there is a knock at the door. I go to answer it, and it’s two ladies and a guy. The girls are obviously shook up, and the guy asks “do you have an English bulldog?” I feel like this is getting ready to go bad. The girls are going to be devastated. April may well go crazy. I look around, and none of them are behind me. I quickly step outside and close the door behind me. I say “yes, we do.” One of the girls says VERY apologetically “she just ran out in front of us. We hit her. I’m so so so sorry!” She was chasing their damn headlights.
The guy then says “we didn’t run over her, she just was hit with the bumper. I’m hoping that the car was low enough that it just knocked her out of the way.” So I start calling for her, yelling, whistling. Nothing. Damn it. The people that hit her were so nice and apologetic. I sent them on their way, and started looking in the field, down the road. But nothing.
By this time, April has walked outside, and she’s realized what is going on. She sat straight down and started bawling. Awesome. I kiss her and hug her and tell her I’ll find her.
And then I start looking. And hollering and whistling. She’s nowhere to be seen. Oh crap. I walk by the backyard fence, and when I do, I hear a familiar playful, gruff bark. I turn to look, only to find a grumpy, fat brindle bulldog looking at me from the back porch. Not a scratch. Not a bump. Nothing.
Thankfully, Bella is built like a tree stump. And being hit by a Honda Civic going 40 mph has absolutely no effect on her. I ran over to her and checked her out, head to toe. She jumped up, playing, happy. Apparently having no idea that she just had a brush with death.
By this time, the girls have just figured out that there is something wrong. April tells them that a car hit Bella, but that she was ok. She tells them it was because Bella was chasing headlights.
Emma sits thoughtfully for a moment, and then says “that’s so weird though. Cuz she never chases headlights like that during the daytime.”
Let that sink in. Oh, Emma. She’s so pretty.
Guess I better be fixing some fence.
