How I Broke a Fingernail (or What Happens When a Stray Shows Up in My Yard Before I've Had My Coffee)

I realize the title of this blog is a mouthful, but welcome to my world.

The story starts out with a poor night of sleep, because I was hacking, wheezing, and coughing in spite of the NyQuil I took to keep me from ripping out sutures from a recent surgery. Suffice it to say, I spent most of the night by the fire on the sofa trying to sit up and sleep to old Frasier episodes on Netflix.

Sometime around 4 a.m., I went back to bed to try and sleep, which I was finally able to do. Then at 6, I got up and let Sally and Delaney out because Sally was whimpering. Then I went back to bed. I thought it was around 8 a.m. when all the commotion started, but the battery is dying on my alarm clock so it was more like 9, which means it was probably more like 7 when I let the dogs out.

Huey was barking and wreaking general havoc in the great room so I leaped out of bed to see what was wrong. First thing I saw was fresh blood tracked all over my flooring, from one of Delaney's claws that had broken. Out of my front window, I saw Delaney and Sally prancing about with a new dog, something that looked like a husky mix with calico cat markings. So I grabbed my iPhone so I could snap a photo of the stray and post it on Facebook and opened the door. That is when the fun began. Huey charged at the crack in the open door and was trying to burst out. I tried to grab his choke chain, but my reflexes were too slow and off he went. He ripped the nail on my middle finger (a fitting metaphor) of my right hand way down in the bed and left some nice skid marks with his claws on my left foot on his way out the door.

And they were off.

I won't tell you the words running through my head that I was thinking about the dog owner because I knew someone would be thinking the same about me because Huey would soon be in their yard chasing chickens or worse.

So I grabbed my keys and wallet and jumped into the trusty Outback to hunt down the little bugger. All this before one sip of coffee, too.

I drove around the loop twice searching for him, only to be chased by the wild pack over on the corner of Bald Eagle and Whippoorwill.

I didn't see him at either of his two girlfriends' houses or the Chicken Lady's house, so I came back home. That's when the phone rang. He was over at Bootsie's, his old running buddy. When I drove up, he came running and hopped in the back seat as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

And, of course, it hadn't.