When Mom said that she needed to get her knee fixed, I had no idea it would be like this! She left the house on Tuesday morning, and when my friend Margo brought her home a few hours later she had 4 legs alright, but two of them were these clacky things that hung down from her front paw pits and didn’t behave like legs at all! They weren’t even attached to her and didn’t have any knees so they couldn’t jump or dance or wrestle. And one of her meat legs was all wrapped up in bandages and straps and plastic. “Mom! When you said that they were going to tie your leg back together, I thought that you meant on the inside! Not with a bunch of banshee cords and duck tape!”
brave dog, but Mom’s new legs were terrifying. Whenever she used them to clack and swing herself around the house, I shivered and cowered as far away as I could get and still watch her. Mostly Mom spent a lot of time in bed just like I do, napping and getting bored right there with me. Since her monster leg was in bed with us, I sat on Mom’s shoulder or lay my head on her chest and watched it so that I could bark at it in case it got up and tried to attack one of us. The good thing about me protecting Mom from her monster leg was that we did lots of snuggling and cuddling when The Leg wasn’t watching.
After a few days, when none of the new legs had attacked yet, I started to relax around them. By now Mom didn’t stink like Irish Spring, she stank like the stray humans that do camping on the sidewalk. I was crawling with the ants from my pants. So for the first time in about 4 days, Mom clacked out the front door and to our car and we went for a drive. She drove to the dog beach, where dogs never have to wear leashes, and humans smile at the dogs from other families while they yell at their own, and dogs introduce themselves to humans from other families while avoiding their own.
One human was very confused when he saw Mom. He looked her up and down, taking in her two clacky legs, her tied-up leg, and her meat leg. And then he said, “Are you okay?” “No, I just noticed that I might have hurt my leg. I think I might need to see a doctor.” Mom didn’t say. “Uh, yeah. I’ve had it checked out already,” Mom did say.
Oscar the Blockhead
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