This past weekend, the roles got reversed- much to Piper's dismay, and physical injury.
Before I get into the meat of this story, I have to put the disclaimer on there- Everyone is FINE. The damage done was minor and has already been forgotten. There is no need to worry about the current state of anyone involved. You can go ahead and wince along to the appointed moments. Trust me, you'll know them when you see them.
It all starts with The Criminals badly needing to be professionally groomed. Nails needed trimming, glands needed expressing (so gross) and in Piper's case- since she doesn't shed and has curly fur- she needed a good trim. We made the appointment to take them to the Petco groomers as our last grooming place turned out to be a bunch of A-holes, despite doing a good job with the dogs. I knew Petco would be a crap shoot, but it needed to be done and time was of the essence.
We headed over, everyone in their seat belts, totally unaware of what was about to happen. I unloaded Odie out of my side of the car and started heading towards the door to the grooming Dept. Suddenly, I hear The Hubby yell "Unlock the car!"
I turn around and all I see is him bending down behind the car, looking at me somewhat frantically. He yells again " UNLOCK the car!"
Well, my car doesn't have the fancy unlocking fob thingy, so I walked back over to HIS side of the car to figure out what the hell is going on. As I round the corner, he says "She's stuck, unlock the car, I can't get her out" and I see Piper, tail stuck in a fully closed car door, trapped.
The Hubby goes to grab Piper to prevent her from pulling on her tail any more then she already was, and she, naturally, lashed out- because that shit hurts- and nipped at him- catching 2 of his fingers in the process. This causes whats left of my ability to focus to fracture and I start digging for the keys I had dumped into my bag and asking is he was ok... Dumb.
This must have taken an actual 45-60 seconds, but in hindsight it felt like I was moving in slow motion. I can't even imagine how long it was in dog time.
So, I unlocked the doors, that door was opened, and Piper was released from her nightmare. She wouldn't let me touch her tail right away, and my concern was it had been broken. Upon inspection, I could tell that her skin wasn't broken, there was no blood, but she was just totally freaked out.
On the other hand, there was some blood on The Hubby. Piper's nip had broken skin on his fingers and he was bleeding a fair amount. It was a total surface wound- her teeth has just scraped his skin, but on the fingers, that's a decent amount of blood. So we grabbed a towel out of my car (thanks to having dogs and working at the shelter, I pretty much always have at least 3 towels going in there) and took care of that right away.
After collecting ourselves for a few minutes, and everyone catching their breath, we man-handled Piper enough to know she was fine, and actually, now that the shock had worn off, seemed to be feeling little to no pain. We went ahead and dropped her off with the groomer, with the instruction to touch the end of her tail as little as possible due to what had just happened.
The next day, after everything was LONG over and everyone had a decent nights sleep, I checked Piper's tail again. This time she let me grab it all I wanted with no flinching at all (reaffirming the judgment call from the prior day that she was fine) and I discovered it- The Bump.
The very last inch or so of her tail now leans a little to the left.
Yep- broken.
But only barely
And she doesn't seem to mind it at all.
To add insult to very literal injury- because I'd asked the groomer to leave the end of her tail alone, they ended up giving her a "lion cut", Which means her head looks enormous and the end of her tail has a flag- like quality to it. Thankfully, she's kind of dumb and has no idea what she looks like right now. She's mainly just happy to be alive.
The lasting wounds for The Hubby are more of the "OMG I hurt the dog" variety then anything to do with his fingers. Those healed fast enough and are fine. He keeps checking her tail and the way she moves it though- the guilt lingers. It will for a while, understandably, and that's part of why I love him.
Through all of this, our tiniest criminal, Odie, just sorta stood and there with the look on his face of " whats all the noise?, why is she crying?, where are we? Wait- there's water here, isn't there? You're gonna let them TOUCH me with WATER?! are you INSANE WOMAN?!" and more along those lines. The actual moment of injury left him completely unaffected. He's lucky that way. The bath didn't actually kill him either, despite his best efforts to convince us otherwise.
So, like I said, it's important to note that everyone involved is fine. Maybe a little shaken, but ultimately fine. The crime here was undeniably committed by the human aspect. The thing about that is, we still have the thumbs, so we still ultimately win. The lack of broken tail is kind of a win too, although scars make you look tough, so I guess in that regard, Piper comes out ahead.
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