Thursday, November 12, 2015

Worrying about my dog Lady

OUR FUZZY LADY LIKED COLD WEATHER

I had a real scare tonight, although some people might say I was being silly.

 First, our dog Lady drank a ton of water, lapping it over and over and over and... It seemed like her drinking lasted for several minutes.

 Then she ignored the food I'd given her and laid down on the floor in the living room. Finally, she got up and went downstairs. Presumably, I figured, she'd go outside through the dog door and do her business.

 But for more than two hours, she didn't come back upstairs, and I got worried. What was wrong with her?

 When my wife got up in the middle of the night, I told her about Lady, and we both went downstairs to look for her. I was afraid of what we'd find, since Lady IS a 15-year-old pooch.

 I opened the basement door, and Lady looked up at us innocently. It was like, "What's up? What's going on? Why are you both up?" She had just been enjoying the cold night air.

 No, I didn't feel like a fool. I felt major relief.

 She's lying beside my foot now and breathing heavily in sleep.

 And I'm just happy she's still with us.

 UPDATE: I'm not happy anymore. Lady passed on Sept. 17, 2016, about 10 months after I posted about my worry.

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EMAIL: tgilli52@gmail.com  BLUESKY: PROFILE



BLOG ENTRIES FROM THE AUTO RACING JOURNAL
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Tuesday, September 29, 2015

No way (I would write that story)


The year was 1980 or '81, and I was in my second (and last) year as sports editor for a small newspaper in South Carolina.

 I'd heard of a kid who'd played basketball a couple of years earlier at the local high school, and that year he was playing basketball for a college elsewhere in the state. I asked the local high-school coach if that was worth a feature story, and he said no; he thought no one would be interested in a full-blown feature.

 So I kept track of the kid and wrote a short update periodically. I probably wrote something short about the kid four or five times over a year and a half.

 One day I was talking to a guy who had played football and basketball at the high school the previous year, so we knew each other. While we were talking at halftime, the basketball player's mother caught me in the hallway beside the open gym door. And with the former high-school star (now a starter for the University of Georgia football team) and a bunch of other folks watching (and listening) in shock, she yelled for at least five minutes.

 It caused a disturbance, as everyone in the gym and hallway could hear her.

 A few days later, she came to the newspaper office and yelled at my boss with me in attendance. He patiently listened, then told the woman that I was the best sports editor he'd ever had. If I didn't want to do a feature story on her son, he said, it was OK with him.

 She was appalled, of course, since her yelling got her nowhere. She stomped out in a huff, and, thankfully, I never saw (or heard) her again.

 I never did a feature on her son. I might have done one if she'd been quiet (or if she'd asked nicely), but I wasn't going to do it after the way she acted.

 No way.

><

EMAIL: tgilli52@gmail.com  BLUESKY: PROFILE



BLOG ENTRIES FROM THE AUTO RACING JOURNAL
(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)
(the book of great NASCAR stories)
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