My Puppy and the World of Weirdness

Good morning everyone!

How are you all doing? I'm sitting here listening to my puppy barking which is such a relief after last Thursday. I had to take him to the vet because I stepped on him hard enough to break his foot. His foot was good but I managed to dislodge a B-B he had been shot with before we got him. This made me very sad and angry because who would do that to a young dog?

Then my 17 yo told me about these tattoo artists who put foreign objects under the skin for effect. His take was that since it was done so well and none of us noticed it, a tattoo artist must have used the dog for practice. That made it worse! I was so angered yet intrigued by this prospect I had to see if what he said were true. Now I knew about tongue piercings and nose piercings. Hindus had done the nose for years with diamonds and rubies and since I knew quite a few Hindu women over my life I could verify this easily. I started to think about all the things he said and remembered the TLC and History channels who have tons of shows on just this thing. There was a man who wanted his horns to look real so had them implanted under the skin on his head. There's the man who wanted to be a man-cat and therefore had whiskers implanted on his new face so it would like he had them. But those were big things, would someone go so far to put B-Bs under the skin for effect?

Much to my surprise, my son was absolutely right. If it can be safely put into the skin, tattoo artists will use it. Heck, I even saw in one country where they were doing eye art and embedding jewels in the eye's sclera which is incredibly dangerous for one's eye sight. And while I might have known this deep down, it was really brought home to me because my 17 yo had a point. This thing had been embedded in my puppy's skin for at least the two months we had him and was totally healed when we got him. We, meaning vet and us, thought was a bursa bulging. Until I dislodged the thing from what the body encapsulated it in, it would have remained there for who knows how long. My son's thought was that something so well established in the dog's body must have been put there on purpose.

All I can say is...eeewww...and I thought I was weird. Will there be no end to the weird things people do? And I'm not talking about other societies because they have reasons...well...I supposed these people do to but to practice on a puppy? I shudder to think.

Now, if you all have any stories about people's weirdness, I would just love to hear them! Comment and you could be a winner of FREE eBooks!

Last week’s winners of the FREE eBook giveaways of The View From Santa’s Sleigh are all of you! Email me if you left a comment! Next week, I’ll be giving away a copy of The Thing About Elves as we gear up for the Christmas holiday bash!

See you all then...

Lynn

But there isn't any snow.

About three weeks ago I was cooking dinner when my high-school son walked in.

“Hey, I have to stay after school tomorrow, we have ski practice.”

Perplexed, I looked out the window. “Hate to break it to you kiddo, there’s no snow.”

He rolled his eyes at me, it’s something ever teenager has mastered to the point of perfection. “We know that, Ma.”

I rubbed my aching head with my hands, something every parent of a teenager has mastered to the point of perfection. “Okay, I’ll bite. How can you ski if there isn’t any snow?”

“We’re going to be doing dry-land conditioning. You know, running, weightlifting, that kind of stuff.”

“Weightlifting?” I echoed. "I don’t recall any muscle heads going down the slopes at the Olympics."

“Whatever. Can I stay or not?”

“Stay where?” my husband asked as he walked in the door.

“Ski practice.” By now my son had gone past the point of eye rolling phase to the hands-thrown up-in-disgust phase.

“But, there’s no snow.”

“They’re going to pump iron.” I replied.

“Since when do you want to join the ski team?” hubby quizzed the boy.

“I’ve always loved to ski and I thought this would be cool. Not only that, the whole team gets to wear cool Spyder coats.”

Yeah, that was his incentive. Forget school spirit, forget the varsity letter, forget the scholarship. My son wanted to be on the team for a flipping coat.

“If you want to join, that’s fine by me,” I conceded. “Just don’t go and do something stupid like break a leg.”

The next day, I walked in from my day-job to find the boy sitting on the couch, a look of despair and embarrassment on his face. One foot was propped on a pillow and there was an ice bag on it.

“What in the hell happened?” I dropped my briefcase and went over to inspect the damage.

“I hurt it at ski practice,” he spoke so low it was almost a whisper.

“The ski practice with no snow?”

The eyes rolled again as he let out a deep sigh. “Yes, that would be the one.”

“But, how?”

“I zigged and my foot zagged. I think I may have sprained it.”

Sprained it? His foot was the size of a football. I uttered the sentence all parents dread, “I think we need to go the emergency room.”

We made the short drive to the ER, the entire way he didn’t say a word. Too upset by thoughts of a lost Spyder coat for idle chit-chat. As the nurse was wheeling him back to his room, she asked how he did it.

“Ski practice,” I announced cheerfully, eagerly waiting her response. Her brow wrinkled in confusion.

“But there isn’t any…”

“…snow,” my son finished. “I know, I know.”

Long story short, the poor kid broke his foot and is going to have to spend the next six weeks in a cast. The sad thing is he can’t even say he was injured during a big ski meet because he was out before one single flake hit the hill. Good news, he will be out of the cast for the last half of the season.

Does this mean he only gets half a jacket?