The Puppy Files: Impaired Vision

Welcome to yet another edition of The Puppy Files, a series in which I travel down memory lane to when I was an itty bitty little puppy with large gnashing teeth and a bad attitude.

As my loyal readers know, I am very much in tune with my surroundings; I see and hear things that most wouldn't even notice.  I can spot a forgotten crumb on the table from ten feet away.  I can hear the cheese drawer in the refrigerator open and close from outside in the backyard.  I can see a chicken scurry across a yard three houses down.

But as impressive as my current level of awareness is, it doesn't even come close to the levels I had as a puppy.  When I was a pup, I'd watch airplanes fly by over head, I was soothed by the sound of opera playing in the background, and I was known to watch people on TV walk from one corner of the screen to the other.

Sometimes, however, this highly tuned gift of mine proved to be problematic, and no example proves this point more than what happened one day at lunch time when I was less than a year old.

When I was a little puppy, Ma used to drive all the way home at lunch time to help Sister "handle me."  Ma would get home from work first, feed me my lunch (those were the good old days when I used to get three meals a day), and take me outside.  While outside, Ma would spend the next ten minutes or so chasing me around the backyard and wrestling sticks, rocks, plants, and her arms out from between my razor sharp puppy teeth.  Meanwhile, Sister would come home from work, eat her lunch, and relieve Ma as my favorite chew toy.  Then Ma would get back into her car and returned to work.

On this particular day, Sister must have finished her lunch early because she and Ma got to spend a couple of moments talking in the driveway before Ma had to hurry back to work.  Never wanting to be left out of a party (think of all the arms, hands, and ankles I could chew on) I came charging out from the backyard and skidded to a stop at their feet.  I gave my head a shake then lunged at Sister's hands.  But before I could grab her soft chewy fingers, I was distracted by something suspended in the middle of my vision; it was a large white glob.

I started chasing the glob, running in circles and snapping at it with my teeth.  Ma and Sister were very much alarmed by my behavior.  They already had their doubts, after all, if I was right in the head given the fact that I seemed to have missed out on the gene responsible for what the American Kennel Club defines as my breed's "eager to please attitude" and this latest quirk certainly did not say much for my sanity.  They looked into the sky for any passing birds I might be chasing and checked the ground for any bugs that might be bothering me, but they saw nothing.

Check Out My Eyebrow Whiskers

My circling intensified.  Concerned that maybe I was having seizure or something, Ma scooped me up in her arms.  It was then, in that moment of inactivity (by this age I hated being held so much that Ma only had a few seconds before I'd start squirming and biting to get down), that Ma saw what the problem was.  There, on the end of one of my eyebrow whiskers was a large white fuzzball.

Sister wiped the fuzzball away and Ma put me back down on the ground.  Relieved that my vision was no longer impaired, I looked up at Ma and Sister, and wagged my tail.  Then I lunged at Sister's hand.

Everything was back to normal.