OK, I threatened to tell this story to a couple friends of mine on Tuesday night, and they covered their ears and chanted "not listening not listening not listening," so restrained myself. Then I realized, hey, this would make a pretty good blog post, because it ends with a startling twist. They replied that they didn't want to hear about any dog killing, and if I posted it, they would not read my blog until this post dropped off into the archives.

What I'm saying is, consider yourself warned.

My sister used to have this cute little lap dog named Daisy. I liked dogs of all kinds at that point in my life, and I thought Daisy was pretty cool. So when my sister moved to Germany, she left the dog at our house and I had the general responsibility of taking care of her.

I should mention that this occurred at the same time that I acquired the bedroom with the magazine pictures on the ceiling. Since my three sisters used to share that room, it had three beds--a regular bed and a set of bunk beds. I could sleep in any of these beds, but I most often chose the regular bed.

The thing about Daisy was that she liked to chew things. In particular, she liked to get up in the night and chew things. Consequently, I was supposed to tie her to my bed post with a leash at night, so she would just sleep in my bed and not chew up all the furniture.

OK, I think you can tell where this is going. One night I didn't sleep in the regular bed. I slept in the top bunk bed. And, stupidly stupidly stupidly, I clipped the leash on Daisy's collar and put the loop over the bedpost, as usual. Ugh. In the middle of the night, she leapt off the bed, and, since this was the top bunk, instead of landing safely on the floor as she normally did she was hung and instantly killed.

All of this was very traumatic. But. I promised a twist and here it is.

My sister was heartbroken, but eventually she moved into an apartment in Germany that allowed pets, and she got another dog, a huge male golden retriever named Reuben. When she moved back to the US, Reuben came with. This dog was in our house for probably 20 minutes before I started wrestling around with him. He seemed to be having fun, but suddenly he just snapped and completely mauled me. One of his teeth went halfway through my left hand, and he ripped a decent gash all the way around my right forearm. For some time, I had bandages on my arms and hands, and I looked like I'd attempted suicide.

So, while I still feel guilty for making a mistake that cost the life of one of my sister's dogs, I sometimes look down at the scars left by her other dog, and I feel like I've paid my dues.
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