With Friends Like This . . .

They say that the dog is Man’s Best Friend. I would like to meet “they” and give “them” a piece of my mind. All be it s small piece because there is not a lot to spare. Maybe “they” never had a dog like my daughter-in-law’s, Tucker.

On this past Sunday, my wife Caroline thought it would be nice to take our dog to the off leash park and let her. No problem, we have done this countless times before with no problems. My son decided his family would come along as well, and bring Tucker.

Now Tucker is a nice dog, as far as dogs go. In the house, he is very well behaved and usually does what he is told the first time, almost always by the second. Outside however, things are a little different. He is still well behaved, but refuses to come when called. At least until he decides it’s time (usually hours later). This has resulted in him being restrained whenever he is outside.

The plan was to leave Tucker on-leash at the park to see how well he would respond. You See, Tucker suffers from on-leash aggression around other dogs. For the most part he is over the worse part of it. Now he whines and whimpers, and occasionally jumps when on-leash around other dogs. Off-leash he gets along fine with other dogs.

Shortly after getting there, he seemed to be doing very well so my daughter-in-law Casey let him go. Tucker had a great time running free and we had no issues with other dogs. In fact, he all but ignored most of them.

After an hour or so, we were ready to go. Tucker was not. After 2.5 hours of waiting for him to come to us, I cornered him. I dove at him in an attempt to grab him. He ran, I missed and landed with a thud on the ground with my arm over my head. I had a terrible pain in my shoulder and was unable to move at first. I thought it might have been dislocated, but after a few minutes I realized it was not. I suffered ‘road rash’ from my chest to my hip from landing on the wood chippings they laid down in the park. My chest hurts from landing so hard and it hurts to take a deep breath. The good news is I didn’t whack my head – would hate to add to the number of concussion related injuries in sports. Oh wait, dog catching isn’t a sport.

Anyway, Casey caught the dog about 15 minutes after my failed attempt. By then he was more than willing to go quietly. Spent the rest the of the night uncomfortable and in pain. It’s real hard making a Mother’s Day dinner with only one useful arm. LOL.

And forget about sleeping! I would get to where my shoulder did not hurt, but then my ribs would. I changed positions and my chest was fine, but the road rash would hurt. Another move and my shoulder would hurt again.

I’ll tell you, I do not need anymore “friends” like that. I can find my own ways of getting hurt.