The Incident (A Tale for Halloween)

The Incident occurred on July 27, 2005. It involved Jack and Jen. Jen was the bitch I had leased to breed to Jack. She was three weeks pregnant at the time of The Incident.

Jack and Jen were a lovely pair of fox terriers and I think I'll save the story of their relationship for other posts. Let me just say that they got along extremely well. So well, in fact, that I kept them together in an expen in the kitchen when I went to work. The black and whites were crated in another room.

I came home from a long day at work on July 27, 2005, to be greeted at the door by a strong smell of blood and Jack and Jen running loose in the house, covered from head to toe in blood.

I panicked.

But the real hysteria didn't start until I walked into the dog room off the front entry to find this:

Lola sniffing the blood on the wall. There were two more crates
on the left that I removed to take the photo. This pic was taken
later that night as I faced the clean up job.

A nice gory close-up.

I had just brought a new kitten, Lola, into the house and my first thought was that they killed her. There was no fur in all that blood but there were certainly paw smears arcing across the wall. In a tearful frenzy, I put Jack and Jen outside--even though they were covered in blood they weren't covered in fresh blood and I figured I had a few minutes--and started looking for the cats. I found Bix. I found Bhumi. But I couldn't find Lola anywhere. I called my friend Gosia and left her a horribly garbled hysterical message. I called my vet--it was only minutes before they were to close for the day and I lived half an hour from their office. They said they would wait.

Finally Lola ambled out of some hidey hole, blinking from being woken from her nap. I made sure the black and whites were more or less okay (no obvious wounds), shoved Jack and Jen into the crates in the car, and zoomed off to my vet. Gosia called when I was on the way. Action had cleared my head a bit and I was able to talk to her all the way there. I doubt I was rational but at least I wasn't sobbing hysterically. I had a plan: get to the vet. After that? I took a deep breath. I would figure it out.

When I pulled up to the vet office, a swarm of techs rushed out the door, threw open my car doors, grabbed both dogs, and whisked them inside before I had even gotten out myself.

About an hour later, I brought these two sad dogs back home:

Jack on the left, Jen on the right being sniffed by Dyna

What happened that day? We know that nearly all of that blood came from Jack, mostly from his left ear, which Jen just shredded (most of his ear is scar tissue now and the tip is missing). He also had a nasty puncture bite on his paw. She had a bite to one ear but was otherwise unscathed. Over the next few days, I found blood in every room of the house, on walls, on furniture, on the carpet. I can only guess that I didn't latch the expen, they were running around the house loose and something set them off--Jack being hapless as usual, a squirrel running across the yard--and they started fighting.

When I got home, I discovered that all of the black and whites had bleeding gums and lips from biting at their wire crates as Jen did her little smackdown on Jack just inches away.

The carpet was never the same.

What did I learn from The Incident?

1. Jack and Jen needed to be crated like everybody else. Separately. And the latches double checked. (That is a habit that I still maintain today for all of my dogs.)

2. Do not, repeat, do not mess with the pregnant bitches. They will kick your ass.

3. Fox terriers are tough little buggers.

4. The pictures of the bloody walls still make me queasy but I can laugh about this now. So even as bad as things were that afternoon, they did get better.

A very chastened Jack.