I had kind of an awful day yesterday! First off, we got home from Fontanelle’s (awesome! sweet! pretty!) debut rock show at about 1am the night before, which was pretty late on the work-night scale, so we went straight to bed, no chit-chat.

But unfortunately Daisy the dog had somehow, while we were otherwise off rocking, lucked her way into a barrel of peanuts that we had…tucked away in some closet somewhere? Not sure. All we know is that when Daisy stopped her wee-hour pacing and worrying and whining long enough to barf spectacularly in the corner, the puddle she produced was chock full of nuts.

Daisy then moved her sad self over to the front door, which I took as a hint that she very much needed to go outside. So, even though it was still dark out, I assembled an sweatpanty outfit and trudged outside and watched sympathetically while she hunched into her shitting pose and unleashed a toxic Whoosh of unhappiness. Ridding her system of that hot mess left her quite a bit perkier, though, and as she trotted back upstairs, she seemed almost human again.

After me and my fuzzy two-hours-of-sleep head filled up on coffee, lots and lots of coffee, Daisy and I went out for our regular AM walk, and she was her normal, darting, perk-eared self. As we we rounded the first corner, I whipped out my cellyphone and to give Marco a call. I started to leave him a message about how Daisy seemed completely recovered from her peanuttle debacle, and I had just finished saying the words, “She probably won’t need to go to the vet…” when the dog on the third house in, the one that Daisy has engaged in many a screaming match in the past, threw her body at the fence surrounding the house. Daisy did not hesitate. She ramped right up to defcon 11 and lurched herself at the other side of the fence. I’m not exactly sure what happened next because it all went down so fast (and I was on the phone, hello?), but I think the neighbor dog had learned herself a new trick, one involving the ability to squeeze her sharp jaws out through one of the cracks in the fence. And Daisy got one look at those snarled open jaws and decided the best idea was to attack them with her nose. So suddenly the world was this armageddon of dog screams and blood. Blood! Splashing! Everywhere! Me, in a sluggy panic, at Marco’s voicemail: “Uh, let me call you back.”

I hung up and stood there for a few milliseconds, unsure quite what to do. I knew what I wanted to do, which was throw up everywhere, but instead I took a few uncertain steps forward, pulled by the soothing momentum of our normal walk pattern, but then I woke up and realized we needed to get back home, like stat. So I shakily turned us around, and shakily run-walked toward home, with Daisy trotting happily along and seeming none the worse for wear, aside from periodic gore-spattering head shakes. So we got home and I hustled her into the bathroom and swabbed down her face with a wet washcloth to reveal? One itty bitty wound the size of a pinprick on the tip of her nose. Dink! She was totally fine, in smiling-good health even.

The bleeding had stopped, but I didn’t want her roaming around the house and rubbing open her nick on the furniture. Also it was hot yesterday, like almost 100 degrees already, so I thought maybe the cool, non-direct-sunlit and also very large bathroom might be a good place for her? So I moved her bed and water bowl into the bathroom, and she immediately curled up and seemed totally content. And so I went to work! (By way of a visit to the neighbor, whom I introduced myself to and explained what happened and made sure their dog was okay and he was very nice, etc.).

But when I got to work, I started obsessing over the idea that Daisy would start re-bleeding somehow, and maybe the bleeding wouldn’t stop this time, and maybe she needed to go to the vet, after all? So I left Marco a series of fun messages, and finally he got back into range and was able to call me back, and it was agreed that he’d leave work early and go home and see what needed what-ing.

An hour later, he called in with a report. “She’s fine. If you hadn’t told me what happened, I’d never have known she’d been injured. The bathroom door, on the other hand…” Apparently poor Daisy had spent the bulk of the morning trying to claw her way out of the cool, relaxing bathroom. And when Marco walked in, her smiling face was covered with paint chips, like a kid covered in brownie, all, “Hi!” and “What?”

In short, I make bad decisions and also am not responsible enough to own small animals, and I should just forget about having children. Tada!

Daisy smiles a “what nose wound?” smile as the polydactyl Marbles lounges above (slap me seven!), both more or less de-boned by the heat of the big Bay Area heatwave of 08.

Caroleen and Sunny of Fontanelle touch the soft spot in all of us on a warm San Franciscan night.