The Pollen Count Downer

The day started out great.

On Saturday morning my sister bought me a brand new toy.  What a great sister, right?  She always picks out nice toys for me; toys with odd voice boxes, toys with rattles rather than squeakers, and toys that are almost as long as I am.  Well, this time she bought me a frog.  But this wasn’t just some ordinary frog.  Nope, this frog had limbs that were twice as long as its body.  And if that wasn’t enough it had five squeakers (one in each limb and a fifth in its body).  Let the fun begin!

Because it was so nice outside, my sister decided that I could play with my new toy in the backyard.  That sounded great to me.  You see, it is a well known fact that playing with a new toy outside in the dirt ensures that it loses its clean new toy smell almost immediately.  That’s how you take a great toy and make it stupendous.  Anyway, I grabbed my toy and raced into the backyard, its spindly legs flapping behind me.  I chewed on it, I squeaked it, I shook it, and I rolled on it.  It was great!  Then my sister got involved.  She chased me and my toy and then grabbed two of its legs and played tug with me.  And when I flipped on my back she rubbed my tummy.  “It really can’t get much better than this!” I thought. 

After playing for about half an hour, my sister said it was lunch time and that we had to go in.  I’ve learned not to get excited about the word “lunch.”  When I was a little puppy I used to get a bowl of kibble at lunch time.  Now that I’m grown, lunch time means that my sister gets to eat and I get a pitifully small Milkbone cookie because I willingly came into the house when she called.  Today, however, it really didn’t matter; I had a new toy and I was going to get to play with it while my sister ate.  If only I knew how badly it was going to end.

It started small; a quick outward puff of air that momentarily disrupted my play.  Then there was a second and then a third.  By the fourth sneeze I was really starting to get annoyed.  What also didn’t help the situation was that my sister had gone from saying a sincere “bless you” to snickering.    I thought that was rather mean of her.  You see, I’ve always taken sneezing very seriously.  Every time someone sneezes I run right over to make sure everything is alright.  Sometimes I even give the sneezer a big wet kiss to comfort him or her.  Sneezing can be traumatic you know!  Anyway, after a few more sneezes I decided that perhaps I should put my toy aside, take a nap, and wait for my allergies to pass.

Well, they didn’t pass.  Instead they got worse…much worse.  From a dead sleep I was suddenly awakened by a series of small sneezes followed by three or four giant, jump off the floor, sneezes which seriously disturbed me and brought my sister to tears with laughter.  How rude!