It has taken me a week to FULLY process what happened last weekend. I went to Dicky’s bar-b-que and brought home a family pack in a big brown bag. I put the bag on the floor and went straight to the garage to check on my pups. Dolly Parton stealthily slipped into the house when I wasn’t watching and found the bag of bar-b-que. By the time I realized what happened, she had consumed one pound of smoked chopped brisket and one pound of pulled pork with at least one container of bar-b-que sauce and some potato salad. Miraculously, she left the baked beans untouched. Well… when I caught her in flagrante (head down, ears back, hunched over the brown bag and gulping furiously) I wailed, “Oooooh, no! Dolly — get in the garage!” Alarmed at my reaction, she ran to the garage door and there stood Zelda the Rotty who undoubtedly detected brisket on her breath. Zelda failed to move out of the way and perhaps even took a step toward Dolly. Big mistake. Dolly Parton lost her little shelter-conditioned mind and went on the offensive. I couldn’t get her off Zelda until I grabbed a plastic dust bin and stuck it under Dolly Parton’s chin and sort of pinned her against the baby gate that separates the garage from the house. Zelda wound up with a 3/4 inch laceration beneath her eye. Dolly Parton returned to her crate clearly feeling that two pounds of bar-b-que and sauce were well worth the imposition of solitary confinement (not that I can read the dog’s mind but I don’t think she was sorry).
The next 12 hours were uneventful. It took a day or so before that bar-b-que began working its magic. I was awakened Monday morning by Josephine the poodle barking her head off. I entered the garage and immediately saw what was so upsetting to her. The wall behind Dolly Parton’s crate was splattered with bar-b-que sauce. The garage looked like a crime scene. In fact, it looked like Bundy Road after OJ dropped by. Dolly Parton now appeared contrite, or at least physically miserable. I scrubbed, mopped, steam cleaned, sanitized and made it look like what happened never happened. I aired poor Dolly as often as my work schedule would allow and for about three days, every trip outside was disturbing to say the least. Dolly Parton drank Kaopectate soup for 24 hours until the situation began to improve. And as of yesterday her little tummy seems to have calmed down and we are back to normal. Whatever normal for Dolly Parton is! She seems so badly to want to make friends with Josephine and Zelda but when there is anything in her environment that she feels she has to guard (bar-b-que especially) she FIGHTS for it. We were doing so well there for a while. She and Zelda looked like they had formed a bond. But then… Barbageddon! And now we’re back to square one. Well. We need professional help… she is going to see my trainer friend next week for a few days for evaluation and whatever else the trainer thinks will help her. Meanwhile I am keeping a close eye on her. She is still a little gassy so every once and a while I get another whiff of Dicky’s. I will never eat bar-b-que again.
