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Cleaning blood off my hands last night, a lot of blood, and I thought, "It’s a bad night when there’s this much blood." The fact that it was coming out of one of my beloved dogs made it worse. Pippin, our boxer mix, has dog agression problems. We’ve had a trainer come out to help us. We’ve got a shock collar for outside walks and strange dog interactions. We’ve done obedience with him. We feed him sepeartely. We make sure toys, treats, and such are not shared. But sometimes he just goes off, no warning, no trigger, just zero to maniac in nothing flat. Last night he attacked our pug, Sasquatch, and if Jon hadn’t dragged him off might have killed him. I ran downstairs to the sound of the fight and the humans yelling to find Carri holding Sas, blood everywhere and Jon locking Pip in his crate. Carri snatched up Sas, put pressure on his eye, I grabbed the keys and off we went to the vet.

I knew Sas’ eye was gone the minute I saw the injury. It was this red chunky lump dangling on his cheek. There was no saving it. In the car he wanted me to pet him, and I did when I could between frantic driving. He wagged his tail. With his eye on his cheek, and Carri still unable to stop the blood he wagged his tail. Pugs are tough little mothers. Sas had his surgery to remove the remains of the eye today. He’s fine, though doped up on morphine, and very groggy. Trinity was saying they could be pirates for Halloween this year, when she saw him today she said, "Maybe we could be Frankenstein’s Monster." The swelling will go down, but he looked pretty pitiful. We’ll bring him home on Wednesday, and before that we have to find a new home for Pip. We just can’t guarantee Sasquatch’s safety anymore around our big puppy. We’ve been lucky enough to find someone we know whose willing to foster him until we can find a permanent home. He’d take Pip since he’s always liked the dog, but he already has a lab and with Pip’s dog agression it’s just too chancy. But at least we won’t have to put him in a shelter an all black dog, five years old, sixty pounds, with aggression problems is going to be hard to adopt. People don’t like to adopt black dogs they perceive them as scary, or something. The older the dog the harder to adopt, people want puppies. The bigger the dog the harder to adopt and then throw in dog agression and I had visions of my beautiful athletic dog rotting behind bars.

The vet offered to put him down, but we couldn’t abide that. But now we have one wounded dog, and one dog that we’ve lost forever soon. These last few days with him are bitter sweet. We lost two dogs last year. Jimmy at 17 and Phouka at 8. It’s been a hard time for pets.

I went to the gym tonight with Carri. I worked hard, and she kept complaining, "Hey, Mr. Speedy." It’s usually me following her speed, but tonight I wanted, no needed, to work. I needed to sweat and have that moment on at least one machine where the thought floated through my mind on a dimming of vision that maybe passing out from exertion seemed like a good idea. I worked myself hard tonight and it helped. I did 40 pounds on the bicep curl at 3X12. I was very pleased with that and that I’m at 40 and 50 pounds for a lot of the other exercises, and I raised weights on some of the more complex machines. I worked, I sweated, I pushed myself, I felt better, but now I’m home and tomorrow Pip has to go away. It’s too sad. I can lift enough weights to make myself feel better, but I can’t lift enough to make it not true.

Carri and I were talking on the way back from the gym that it felt like this week should be over, not just Tuesday. I said, "Last night feels surreal, unreal." If only.

I told her partway through the weight routine, "Well at least no one’s dead. It’s a still a good week." Then I realized what I’d said, and I added, "But when you’re saying it’s a good week because no one’s dead, it’s really a pretty bad week." She could only agree with me. We loose Pip tomorrow. We bring Sassy home with his new pirate look. Life will go on. It has a way of doing that. Now Jon and I are going to hit the showers, because he did his workout here at home. He hates lifting weights and I love it. He does Secret Bulgarian workout. I would tell you the secret, but then I’d have to kill you. Wahahahah!

Sometimes you laugh so you don’t cry. I’ve been laughing a lot today.