The Rules Reconsidered: Well, Hold On Now
I was in a foul mood. I'd not been in the office in days. Now mind you, the life of a drinker is serious business, and I try to put my standard forty-hour week in. And at this rate, Ye Olde Bull and Bush on Montgomery 76107 (please, no direct correspondence; all mail will be summarily returned) will have to instate depressive hour, drinks twice priced, just so my bank account will make sense.
Nor, I hate to say it, was I watching the TCU/Houston game, which might have at least gone some way in justifying my absence from my place of deployment. No. I was babysitting--dogsitting, more accurately--four canines: a whippet named Margo, a King Charles Spaniel named Randall, a Pit Bull named Corona, and an elongated Chihuahua, that moved along the ground like a dappled comma, named Penelope.
And it was while trying to feed them their pills from spoons dipped in peanut butter that my phone dinged.
"Holding! How do you not call that?"
"Seriously!"
"Honestly, these announcers are the worst. I can't decide who's worse: the announcers or the refs?"
"The announcers are not affecting the outcome of this game."
"True."
At which point, peanut butter spoon in hand, I tried to glean some kind of glimpse of what exactly was going down in Houston. And it was then, that Corona, the Pit Bull, who had a taste for peanut butter but not his pills, licked the spoon clean and let the pills fall to the floor. Meanwhile, Penelope, the Chihuahua, who has the edible sense of a vacuum cleaner, lapped up one of the Pit's trazodone (an antidepressant and sedative, intended, in this case, for the behavioral alteration of a Pit Bull).
And then all hell broke loose.
I Googled as fast as I could the score and saw that TCU was up (which was good), but Penelope was down. So I called her mother, Kelley, a veterinarian who would know what to do in the event her dog decided to commit suicide: "Kelley, Penelope ate one of Corona's pills!"
"The trazodone or the benadryl?"
"The white one!"
"I'll call you back."
"What the . . ."
Click.
At which point, I was able to get a sense of what I'd missed. Evidently, 4th and 3, our Frogs went for it. Morris threw to Wiley, who wasn't held so much as chokeheld by the Houston guy. Wiley tipped the ball, and it ended up in the hands of another Houston guy who ran it three dozen yards before he was tackled by our own quarterback--who I didn't think was in the tackling business in the first place.
That's when I got the call.
"Hey Kelley!"
"Well, guy, you need to take Penelope to the hospital."
"I can't take Penelope to the hospital. She isn't a human."
"Believe it or not, there are hospitals for dogs. They're called veterinary clinics. I happen to work at one."
"Kelley! You're a doctor! How much they paying you?"
"You need to go fast. They're going to have to induce vomiting."
"Oh well, that's perfectly perfect, ain't it."
So at this point, while I'm swearing at the refs, and Penelope is hyperventilating at my feet, and Corona, the Pit Bull, is running around weeping, which makes no sense--I thought Pit Bulls were supposed to be tough, a damned lie--I have to find a way to put each dog in their happy cage, shushing barks, evading bites, while taking Penelope to the car, hoping she doesn't decide to induce her own vomiting in the car. Driving to the animal hospital, eyeing my phone, it became clear to me the cause of Penelope's danger: those damned pinstriped pinheads, who didn't know well enough to abide by the Purple Rule.
Now, the Purple Rule is simple, easily memorable: "If their team does it, it's a penalty; if ours does, it isn't."
That simple. Had those bloviating bollock heads done their job, there would have been no interruption into my feeding of the dogs, and I'd have been able to stomp the fallen trazodone to powder before Penelope could have ingested it.
Instead, there was I, driving a Chihuahua with a bladder the size of the pill she just ate, to the animal hospital so she could receive an emetic that would empty her belly of all its contents, pill included.
The next day, Penelope made a fabulous recovery, so fabulous in fact, she felt thoroughly confident and happy to piss all over my floorboard.
So, referees everywhere, in the event you read this, for the safety of dogs everywhere, to say nothing of the welfare of my floorboard, abide by the damned Purple Rule.
SI
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