I had to continue this tale.
You see, the Collie’s name is Storm.
She put me in A&E, most of this afternoon.
Sweet as a lamb at home and a candidate for K9 Mensa, she cannot be around other dogs (except ours) she just goes nuts.
So, if she comes out with us, she’s on the lead, muzzled and with booties on front paws (because there isn’t a muzzle made she can’t get off with those paws).
Anyway, I must have let the lead twist around my finger, because she saw another dog (3x her size) on the beach and lunged in it’s direction. This neatly dislocated the Distal Phalanges of my right pinky, at the DIP.
I didn’t immediately realise, what with chasing down a newly freed Collie, somehow achieved recall and got control of her.
NO.4 child (youngest daughter) came legging over to help, just as I noticed my finger.
Tip sticking out 90⁰ from the rest, straight at the adjacent ring finger. Cue NO.4 retching and heaving and me suddenly feeling the pain.
I grabbed it and yanked it a little too hard, snapping it back into place with a distressingly loud crack. This prompted NO.4 to actually spit a little over her lunch and the recently arrived NO.1 to join the retching.
So, off we toddle home, drop kids and dogs and nip down for a bit of TLC at Torbay minor injuries.
Every time I went to explain what was wrong, first at reception, then Triage, then the Nurse Practitioner, I would get as far as holding out my hand and saying “I think I might...”; at which point they all turned their heads away and said “Eww!”
The student Radiographer’s face was the best.
Get home. Make a cup of tea, piss off to bedroom to watch a movie (it’s somebody else’s turn to do the roast (best bit about teenagers)).
Storm, is stressed, though. This isn’t unusual, sometimes she’ll take a couple of hours to settle after an “incident”, especially if she has been “told off”, that could be as mild as a shouted “What did you do!” and she’ll hid under the stairs shaking. She has never been smacked or hit in anyway.
Next thing I know, I hear Polly loudly crying “Stoooormm noooo!”
The dog has squat and pee’d by the backdoor, full eye contact with Polly and no attempt to ask to go out.
Cue NO.3 with bucket and mop (she was assisting with roast).
Pee mopped up, NO.3 picks up bucket and goes to throw it into the drain outside back door.
Bucket handle snaps.
Cue flooded conservatory and all hands on deck to shift furniture, multiple tools and tool boxes, shelving units and a huge assortment of junk that was put in there, um, “temporarily”, some in now sodden cardboard boxes.
Muggins, of course dives in to help, only to snap his shiny new splint and be sent to sit on the stairs.
So. Anybody want a cute, loveable and incredibly intelligent, if tiny, Collie? One with the most apt name in the history of dogs?