Grace zero, horse one

What with the whole grad school semester starting and all, I have failed to inform you of the lastest trials and tribulations of dog ownership. Last weekend, my dearest, darlingest, Grace(less) traveled with Anthony to the mountains in the North of North Carolina where his friend Doug's family owns an one-hundred acre farm. Being the city dog that she is, she gets such a kick out of wide open fields and all the grass she can roll around on.

But then, THEN!, Grace discovered the three horses that roam the farm, keeping the grass low (seriously folks, the horses have no other reason for living; No one rides them or gawks at them or nothin'). So she jumped four feet off the ground adn through the barbed wire fence (she has the cuts and scrapes to prove it) to investigate. And she went nuts, zipping through their legs, biting at their hooves, carving out donuts around them. Anthony tries calling her, but she doesn't listen. He takes out his gun and shoots three shots into the ground, in a mad attempt to scare off the horse or get Grace's attention. It doesn't work.

Of course, the horses don't much like this pesky little dog so they start kicking at her. Grace dodges, she weaves, she misses a couple dozen kicks.

But not that last one. No, she got stuck in the corner of the fence, with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, and that thousand pound beast made contact with Grace's back left leg, fracturing it in several places and throwing her about fifteen feet in the process. Our little pup jumps back up to chase the horse again but quickly realizes that she cannot put any weight on her back leg and falls over. She begins that heart-rending whimper that breaks the heart of all animal lovers.

Needless to say, it took all of Anthony's self-control not to shoot the horse in the face - after all, Grace is daddy's little girl (any of you who have seen how they act around each other can testify to that). He and Doug rushed her to the vet hospital and they bandaged her up. They take x-rays to prove that she has no internal bleeding and wrap her in those adorably pastel wrappings you seen in the picture above.

I have spent the last week trying to keep Grace resting - which is tough for a pup that likes to run and play. Our vet here in DC gave us more pain meds that are supposed to help both with the pain and with the extra energy - they are supposed to make her a little drowsy. I feel bad for her, but she is already bouncing back, bounding up stairs at breakneck speeds and jumping all over the neighbors. If it weren't for the cast, you wouldn't know she had been hurt.

The worst part of the whole incident is the plastic guard the vet gave me to put on her when I am not around. Grace doesn't much like the cast so she tears all the gauze out when I am not looking. Which means that she gets to be a miserable little conehead when I am not home. (I have to admit that in the deepest, darkest corners of my coal black heart, I find the conehead look highly amusing.) If I remember, I may take a picture of Grace's haute conehead look and post it.

In the meantime, Anthony returns from his last trip with the Detail tomorrow. He has spent Grace's first week of recuperation in Hawaii (the bastard!) and starts training for his Peru post in a couple of weeks. He will be stateside for the next ten months or so, which means that I now have a really sexy cook, maid, chauffer, and dog-walker to take care of the little things around the house while I focus on my graduate studies. It is good to be me - starting tomorrow.