bloody fight

Posted by admin | December 4, 2018

It was a good plan to start with. Both Zailey and Milo’s kennels were bare while pillows and blankets were cleaned. Their dog dishes were sitting just outside of their kennels, so that is where I fed them. Milo quickly ate his, so I thought he was still hungry. I fed him a little more since he hadn’t eaten much the previous day and a half or so. That was a mistake.

My wife thinks it was a mistake that I fed them out of their kennels in the first place. It wasn’t like this was the first time it had happened. I didn’t think it was a big deal and it shouldn’t have been.

Milo was done eating and didn’t want the extra food I put in his dish. Zailey for some odd reason abandoned her food and was slowly heading for Milo’s bowl. I didn’t think much of it since I thought Milo wasn’t going to eat it, Zailey might as well have it. At that point, I didn’t know she had her own food left.

Jynx loves dog food. For some reason, he thought that Milo’s abandoned bowl made for a good meal. I think this was the main catalyst for what happened next.

Milo’s territoriality kicked in. He decided to tell the other two to leave his food alone. Zailey said, “I’m bigger than you and I can have it if I want.” The two started their wrestling. Snarls and barks went up before the yips of pain. My wife and I were yelling at them, but the two were in their own world. It was looking to be a fight to the death.

Somehow, my wife got hold of a spray bottle that we keep filled with water as their deterrent and was spraying Zailey, who was kicking ass in the fight. I kept trying to get in and separate the two. Finally, I got Zailey’s collar and drug her ass outside. She went out on two feet since I had the collar held up high enough that her front feet never touched the ground until she was outdoors.

Milo was cowering in a corner and shaking like a leaf. He held his right front paw up and out. The way he held the paw made me think his leg was broken. I gingerly felt the leg, but found nothing wrong. I picked him up and looked him over from nose to tail. I also felt his leg as he wouldn’t put pressure on it. The only time he seemed to be in pain was when I felt at his elbow, but only if I was trying to feel under it. He was using his leg to shield a small cut on his side. It was slowly oozing and looked to be his only injury.

I kenneled Milo and then got Zailey. I did the same injury inspection for her. The only thing that she shied away from was when I tried to touch her lip on the left side. I think Milo got her lip, but I couldn’t see an injury. If there was one, it was on the inside of the lip where it would heal well naturally anyway.

A couple of nights later, I woke up in the middle of the night with some stomach issues. Trying to get back to sleep, I was thinking about wind rustling through the prairie. I was trying to bring peace and tranquility to my mind so that I could sleep.

Thinking this over and over, I started to develop an inner monolog. It was pretty good with talk of peace and the imagery of the grasses. Then I thought about writing this down and the next thing that came to mind was that this was a good way to start my Flaming Curse novel (three witches and a living skeleton on the Kansas prairie). There is so much fighting and strife in the novel that starting off talking about peace and the wonderful landscape would bring a stark contrast to the novel. Especially after the reader looks at the image of a burning skeleton on the cover, I’m really making their head spin. By the end of the first chapter, peace is out the window.

I wrestled with this for a little while. All I really wanted to do was sleep, not rewrite the first paragraph of the novel. I figured this could wait until morning. But sleep was still elusive, so I brought up the document on my phone (my license of Word allows me to write documents via mobile). I really just wanted to see the current first line to see how good it was. It was a good line. I couldn’t throw it away. I thought about shutting down my thoughts on rewriting the beginning. Then I thought, well, let me write it and see how it is. I can always delete it if it is bad. The fight was on.

After writing the new beginning, I love it. The old first line is the first line of the second paragraph since it holds a little nugget of intrigue.

Did either dog win the fight? Did either beginning to my novel win? The food is still in the bowl and both beginnings still exist. Milo was a bit bloodied, but may learn from this (at least I hope so). My beginning is even stronger. We’ll see what happens from here.