Home Is Where You Can Give Directions

I walk a lot around the town where I live. People will frequently pull over to ask me where places are and most of the time I can help because people are looking for the library, post office, McDonald's, or grocery store and I know where those are. Sometimes people ask me about things like particular churches and I must confess I don't know the Lutheran from the Catholic from the Methodist churches, so I may have failed a time or two there. It makes me so happy when I can help someone out.

I was back in Michigan this past weekend and one of the things I did was go to a high school graduation party for one of my friend's daughters.  My friend graduated from high school at the same time I did and now she has a daughter who graduated from that very same high school.  Now you can figure out exactly how old I am. It seems like just yesterday that she was a baby and I was sending her tiny clothes and board books.  My friend had recently moved and so I had never been to her house, but I was armed with her address and I knew where the road was, so I took off with confidence to find it.

And I got so lost. You guys, this road is divided by a highway and I didn't know that. I was driving around in my hometown for miles, round and round in circles. It was craziness.  Not my hometown any longer, I guess. It was a harsh lesson. (You guys. I did put it into the GPS. Google Maps was WRONG.)

Another reason I went home is because my mom recently had surgery and she's laid up at my sister's house. My sister wanted a day off, which is completely understandable, so I went over to her house to take care of my mom and the collection of animals who live there while my sister and her husband went on a date.

So, my sister and her husband have two dogs and a cat. My mom has a dog and a cat. They're all there and they don't all get along.  Here are the relevant players to the story and I'm not changing anyone's name because they're all dogs.

Red: This is my mom's dog. He's and old, adorable Pomeranian who happens to be my favorite dog in the world. If you have a dog, clearly your dog is my second favorite.

Little Bit: This is my sister's dog. She loves to play Frisbee for hours and is terribly territorial about other dogs in her space.

Louie: Into this mess of animals, a couple of weeks ago, my sister and her husband got a new dog named Louie. Louie has clearly been abused in his life, but he's generally quite calm and is probably the most chill of all of the animals in the house.  He likes to play ball, but it's hard to do because Little Bit doesn't like him touching her toys.

I had been at my sister's house for less than 10 minutes when Little Bit attacked Red. She was biting him and Red, my favorite dog in the world, was making the worst sounds I have ever heard come out of a dog.  I put my foot in between them to try to separate them and Louie walked right up to me and bit my leg. I grabbed Little Bit's collar and managed to get her into a locked room to calm down and bandaged up Red's bleeding before I snuck off to the bathroom to see exactly what the damage was to my leg.

And this is why, when I got back home on Sunday night, I unsubscribed from the local pet shelter's web site that I had been following closely in an attempt to find the perfect dog for our house. I'm not going to be hanging out with any dogs for a bit.

There's no place like home, where you know how to give directions and you don't have to worry about random dog outbursts.