I only had two rows to go to finish the shrug I was knitting. I was knitting in bed with Fiona, my elderly basset hound, while her sister slept on the bed on the living room floor.
I only had two rows to go to, so when Fiona got up for a potty break, I asked her to wait until I got to the end of the row I was working on. She didn’t listen and meandered towards the door. I knew I should stop there and go with her, but I was close to the end of the row. What could happen? There hadn’t been a fight in years. So, I kept knitting.
And that’s when it happened. The snarl of a dog fight. Fiona had clearly gotten too close to Lucy, who hates to be woken up. I threw aside the knitting and kept from the bed. No elegant landing however, because I tripped or got tangled in blankets and fell on the floor. I could see that Lucy had Fiona pinned and was making a lot of noise, but no teeth were involved.
I crawled over, pulled Lucy off and put her in timeout. Then, went to Fiona to make sure she was fine. She was, of course. There was no blood and she seemed less worried than I felt. With Lucy in timeout, I took Fiona out for the potty break that started the whole incident, and then the dogs went back to sleep and I, finally, finished those two darned rows.
I awoke in the middle of the night because my back hurt. I tried to get comfortable and wondered if I had done a little something to it during the leap, landing or rescue. The next morning, it was a little tough to stand straight, but as back issues go, it wasn’t too bad and within a few days I was almost back to normal, though I was still being careful.
If I had just stopped when Fiona got up, none of this would have happened. Hindsight is 20/20.
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