It’s a Sunday morning. I breeze into my son’s room with, “Good morning, sunshine! I’m gonna need your help cleaning up blood.”
Dalton groans. “Again?”
“Yep! It’s much easier for you to get the baseboards and under the dining room table.”
You may be wondering why. Because Dalton’s knees are three decades younger than mine and my husband’s, of course.
Wait. Was it the blood you were wondering about? Cleaning up blood is simply our new morning ritual. And not because we’ve embraced sacrifice.
It’s because of our dog. More specifically, his tail.
Tankie, our rescued staffy/cattle dog mix, wags his tail with unmatched ferocity. I say this having endured the lashings of master tail waggers. I grew up dodging a chocolate Labrador’s tail. I endured repeated beatings from the tail of Woofie (Dane-Labrador-American bulldog). And I would choose to be hit by Woofie’s tail while wearing shorts and sporting a severe sunburn over being hit with Tankie’s tail in padded gardening pants.
We no longer allow drinks on our coffee tables. Hell, we no longer allow ANY items on our coffee tables. A single whack from Tankie’s tail turns a Kleenex box into a dangerous projectile.
While I do not condone tail docking, I began to understand its history. Especially among cattle dogs.
The funny thing is, Tankie never cut his power tail on anything. I don’t know if that’s because said tail was battle hardened during his time on the streets of LA or if it’s genetic. But his tail could—and did—smash against everything from iron furniture to glass-edged tables to an angry cat’s claws without the skin ever breaking.
It took Tankie’s own teeth to draw blood.
While we were away among the sequoias in March (post to be written some day when I’m not spending hours cleaning up blood), Tankie had anal gland issues. An abscess formed and then ruptured. Our pet sitter thought Tankie stank and gave him a bath. This didn’t help the smell. It took our return and a trip to the vet to identify the culprit as the anal glands, which is a pretty common canine problem, though we’d had Tankie for years without his anal glands acting up.
Tankie got antibiotics and a cone to keep him from licking his butt.
Tankie, who is nicknamed “The Relentless,” because he never gives up trying to get you to throw a toy or ball for him even after he’s walked 5 miles and played ball for an hour, managed to contort himself enough to access the body part closest to his butt: the tip of his tail.
The tail mauling occurred overnight. When Tankie excitedly greeted us at 5 AM the following morning, his tail left a bloody trail on walls, doors, and furnishings.
There was blood on curtains. The tablecloth. The floors. The white kitchen cabinets.
No rug escaped gory baptism.
Tankie’s tail wags with such force and intensity that blood landed in the upper corners of windows.
Future owners of our house will someday find flecks of blood on the ceilings and wonder what gruesome murders we committed here.
We’ve spent the last month trying all kinds of bandaging and cone-like deterrents so the tail can heal enough to stop making our house look like it belongs in Nightmare on Elm Street).
Tankie the Relentless always gets to it again.
Maybe I should simply paint our walls red.