My poor beagle Charlie has done it again. He has gotten himself into a world of trouble by allowing his insatiable appetite lead him astray.
The other night, we arrived home from the YMCA, and were preparing a late dinner. The house was chaotic with dinner preparations, excited dogs, and overstimulated children. Mayah was assigned the task of feeding the dogs their dinner while I got our own evening meal ready, and nobody was paying attention to Charlie, who had designs on Sara Beth's dinner, as well as his own. Sara Beth was, at this point, far more interested in greeting her pack than consuming the tasty morsels of dried dog food that was placed in front of her, but Charlie had no such compulsions.
After finishing his own bowl of nutrition, he assumed that Sara Beth had let her guard down, and was in the process of helping himself to seconds- courtesy of Sara's distraction. When Sara realized that her bowl was being robbed at a frantic rate by her rival Charlie, she took offence and set about the task of teaching that rascal a lesson. I am not quite sure if Charlie was protesting the method of Sara's remonstrances- which consisted of a strong set of teeth clamped securely around his neck- or being deprived of his second meal of the evening, but he set to howling and yelping as only a woeful beagle can. The outcome of their little argument was a wound to Charlie's ear that sliced it neatly up the middle. The wound needed to be promptly addresses, as Charlie felt that it would be helpful to shake his head and splatter blood all over the house.
The whole family set off on a field trip to the emergency vet 20 minutes away at 10:00 at night.
Arriving, Charlie insisted on bleeding all over the vet's office while searching out any scraps of food that some other careless pet may or may not have left behind. He spent an uncomfortable night there, getting shaved, stitched and bandaged while Sara Beth was gifted with what she saw as a whole night of having her pack to herself.
The next morning, after paying an atrocious vet bill and receiving instructions for medicating and caring for a wounded rascal, I brought Charlie home . I refused to feel a disproportionate amount of sympathy for this dog, who, through greed and selfishness, single handedly drained the funds we had set aside to go camping in September.
He now wears the "Cone of Shame" as you can see from the picture, and we have made the decision to invest in pet insurance. I am hoping his stitches will be ready to come off in a few days because keeping his head wrapped in bandages has become a full time job, when you consider that Charlie's entire existence right now seems to revolve around determinedly removing said bandages.
Oh, and to avoid future situations of this nature, the dogs are now leased and fed in separate rooms at mealtime.
