Mishaps Part Two: The Worst Moment In My Adult Life

This is a very difficult post for me. I'll start with the story the vet told me in his effort to make me feel better.

A father and son were playing with their boxer. The dad was gently lobbing a softball at his son, who hit it with a baseball bat to send it flying. The boxer was having the time of his life fetching and retrieving the baseball. You can almost predict what happened: in one awful moment, the ball, bat and the dog's head all came together. The dog's jaw was broken, the father and son just devastated. The vet assured me of two things: first, the dog's jaw was repaired and everything was fine and second, what I'd done to Molly was nothing compared to that accident.

So this is what I did to Molly.

Once we'd discovered that Molly loved chasing sticks, my mornings went like this: I would get out of bed around 6 a.m. and, while Molly and Bruce continued to snooze, I'd get dressed. Then Molly and I would go over to the sports field behind Jarvis Collegiate right next door. Many large trees lined the property and there were always sticks around. I'd find a stick and throw it for Molly for anywhere between a half an hour and an hour, until the dog seemed good and pooped. Then we'd go inside, wake Bruce up and eat our respective breakfasts.

One morning I found a great big long stick - twice as long as Molly. Molly loved chasing big sticks, and looked supremely comical carrying one - carefully balanced - in her mouth.

This stick was very long, so I was taking care to avoid the dog who was prancing around my feet. But, I wasn't careful enough. Halfway through one big underhand swing I felt the stick connect with something and I said a quick prayer that it was not the dog as I looked down.

I had hit the dog. Molly was curled in a fetal position on the ground, not moving. In shock, panicking and full of pain and sorrow, I dropped the stick, picked up the dog and ran back home. I couldn't bring myself to look; it was everything I could do to keep myself composed as I made my way back to our apartment.

Instead of me dealing with how the dog looked, I forced Bruce to. I plunked down on his side of the bed and said, "look at Molly and please tell me I haven't blinded our dog."

Thrilled to have been woken in such a manner, Bruce still dutifully did as asked. His exclamation of dismay when he saw Molly's face destroyed my last shred of composure and I burst into tears. 

There really didn't seem to be much point in spending time explaining to Bruce what happened, though I did try, and it gave me the time I needed to gather myself enough to call the vet and say I needed to bring my dog in right away.

The vet determined that Molly's skull had done just the job it had been designed to do and fully protected her eye from the force of the blow. They assured me no serious damage had been done and prescribed, as a precaution, some antibiotic drops for her eye. And they told me the story, related above, that I found truly not comforting at all.

I took two pictures of Molly to record this sad series of events. One the day of as a reminder to not play with inappropriately large sticks. One a few days later to show how quickly she had healed.

I'll start with the photo of how well she healed, which also features her new favourite toy:

And here's the record of the worst moment in my adult life.

I'm glad to say we never again did anything so distressing to the dog, except for, of course, the day we put her down.

We did do this, though.

Thanks for reading!

Karen