A Grooming Tail

​Well..here's a bit of mundane minutia that I'm going to try to turn into a readable  blog.

Let's see if I succeed.

Tonight we're celebrating Evan's birthday, and Saturday night I'm seeing my BFF for dinner and a show..haven't seen her since Evan's wedding in September.

Okay..these details are already superfluous so let's get to the nitty gritty

So because of these special occasions, I decided to go for a mani/pedi today, which autocorrect first presented  as "manicotti", which I almost kept, because autocorrect is a raving lunatic.

I'm at the manicurist's station, and the woman next to me is having her nails  done as well.

  She seemed reluctant to talk to her "Madge"  and  told her she wasn't "doing well and didn't want to talk about it" and if you gave her the side eye, you could see she was clearly upset.

She then begins to open up, and says she's devastated because her family just had to make the painful decision of putting their  dog to sleep. 

 She's sharing all the horrible details, and I just wanted to reach out and hug her.

Well..that would have been weird to offer physical comfort to a stranger, especially with wet nails, so I decided to do what I do best by offering verbal words of wisdom.

I say, "I don't mean to eavesdrop..but we just went through this in March. It was so hard, but when we realized we were ending his suffering, not his life, it was so much easier..."

She nodded, and I add:  "He was in such bad shape and it wasn't even  his first brush with death.  Last August, he had just returned from the groomer when he was let outside to do his business, and he somehow managed to squeeze through the slots of a very secure gate.  Our sixteen and a half year old poodle almost drowned that day but lived another seven months and.."

The woman stared at me and said, "You're Luke's Mom??"

I had no idea who she was until she identified herself:

"I'm Heather.  I am  that  groomer you just talked about"

I didn't recognize her because Jim did all the drop offs, but what a coincidental  story about my fur baby,  shared on the thirty-first  birthday of my real baby.

She went on to say that Luke was her last pure-bred poodle, as they're all now Yorkipoos and Morkipoos and piles of poo.

(That last one came from me)

We both laughed as we remembered all the scars Jim bore when he was stupid enough to  try to give him a  new toy.

Heather remembers him as tough at first, then sweet and mellow for nearly  a decade,  until the incontinence and dementia set it.

(I'm talking about Luke, not Jim)

There's something about dog owners..we're all just six degrees of separation, aren't we??

Just a mere Bonaparte...

 

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