Doggone It!

I had a pretty busy and very eventful weekend. But let me start at the beginning.

On Friday, Lauren had a Meet n' Greet at her art studio downtown. Here is Miss Lauren in her studio, with a bunch of her different paintings. The naughty elephants are my favorites, but really, I love them all...
We stopped by the after party at Wesley's, but it was too crowded for all of us, so we went home. Yes, we ARE getting old, thanks for noticing!

On Saturday, Cory and I visited a couple of rummage sales, then I headed out to Holly's son Johnny's second birthday party. Lately I've been trying to work out more and I've been taking lots of long walks at Wildwood with my iPod and giant headphones:

I can't wear the ones that go in your ears, they always pop out for some reason. Anyhoo, I undid all of my hard work at the birthday party with Spongebob cake, cookies, and Capri Suns which, according to Holly's sister Danyel, are packed with sugar. But this is Johnny, and who can say "no" to that face? And here is my best gal Holly and me...And a fun part of the party was that all of Holly's sisters were in town. I never get to see them cause they live in Chicago and Indiana, so it was great to have them all in one place.

Holly and her sisters...

After the party, I met up with Cory and we headed over to Shayna's house. This is Shayna, making a pretty face:

Shayna is moving to Washington soon (the State, not the District) and as part of the preparation for her move, she is giving lots of stuff away. Cory and I stopped by to look through some of this stuff. Shayna has a very pretty, very active dog named Ruby. Ruby is about 1 year old and one of the few dogs I really like. Shayna also lives on a very busy road. We were only there for about 5 minutes when I looked up and out the window and saw a dog across the street that looked suspiciously similar to Miss Ruby. I said, "Shayna, is that your dog across the street?" Shayna looked up, "Oh, shit, yes it is! How did she get over there??" Shayna walked outside, then realized the danger of the situation and told Ruby to stay. Ruby listened for about 5 seconds before starting to make her way across the 4-lane road. Shayna kept yelling, "No! Stay! Stop!" but Ruby kept coming. She made it across 2 lanes, the turn lane, one more lane and then, as we watched, was hit by a car in the last lane. Shayna and I screamed and panicked and for a minute, could only wonder, "What do we do???" Cory and I ran outside and Ruby had, thankfully, been thrown onto the grass when she was hit, so she was at least out of the way of more traffic. At this point, someone stopped (although NOT the car that hit poor Ruby) and Shayna's neighbor came outside, thankfully having more wits about her than we did. And then, completely unexpectedly, Ruby stood up! Which was a good sign, but a bad thing when she was still so close to the road, so I quickly told her to lay back down, which she did. The neighbor told us to call the emergency vet and I remembered that I had a card with their number on it with me, from having taken Knuckles there last winter. I ran inside and got the number, and some towels so that Cory and Shayna could pick the dog up and get her in the car while I called the vet. The neighbor was immensely helpful throughout all of this, letting them know the best way to pick the dog up and how to wrap her up, etc. We rushed Ruby to the E-vet and they took her out of the car and inside on a little doggy gurney. Along the way, we were sure she wasn't going to make it because it looked like she was bleeding out of her mouth and we were sure that meant she had internal damage.

To make the rest of a long story short, they took x-rays of her insides and all of her bones, and the prognosis? She's FINE!! No broken bones, no internal bleeding, no brain damage, no punctured lungs, nothing! This dog got hit by a car going at least 45 MPH, and she came out of it with bruising, a few cuts, some road rash, and a lot of soreness, but otherwise, unscathed! We have now decided her name needs to be changed to Ruby the Tank, and I told Shayna she will no longer be able to discipline Ruby in any way, because Ruby has just proven that she is more badass and hardcore than any of us. The blood in her mouth? Just some road rash on her lip, which now just makes her look tougher. I saw Ruby on Sunday afternoon when we went to brunch, and again Sunday night cause Cory and I joined Shayna for a benefit, and she was almost completely back to her usual, rambunctious behavior. I am just AMAZED. Very thankful, but amazed! And now everytime I see Ruby, I'm just so happy to see her because I really thought she was a goner. I made sure to tell her yesterday that she is definitely one dog I will never, ever forget.

Anyway, that's my story of Ruby the Tank. I'm so glad everything turned out the way it did in the end, but I also keep getting flashbacks of watching her get hit, and I don't think that will go away for awhile. By the way, she got across the street because she jumped the fence in the backyard. Shayna said she will never let Ruby step one paw out of the house without a leash on from now on. She's also considering making her wear a leash inside, too, just to be safe...

Everyone hug your dog today!