and now for something completely different...

Please welcome Mary Ricksen, author of Tripping Through Time, now available at The Wild Rose Press.
Hello, Mary, and welcome!

Hi, Dayana!

What surprises do you have in store for us today?

I just thought I'd do somthing different today, everyone. All I see are interviews and I thought a little story would be a nice change. Also, I will be giving away a free .pdf copy of my book to one lucky commenter today, so don't be shy. Speak up!

King Takes Over At The Vets

I have always had dogs instead of children. It wasn't my choice but I dealt with it by having pets. From the beginning my DH and I each had our own dogs. Me a Heinz 57, Queen of the lickers and very lovable, and he had a male black and tan, German Shepherd named King. Saving King was another story entirely, but I'll stick to on the story of King at the Vets.
He was smart. So darn smart that at times it was eerie. His expressive eyes, his doggie voice, and his body language, were all he had to use, there were things he did that blew my mind. But I digress:)

King was also very well behaved. He never chewed on anything he wasn't supposed to, he obeyed every command immediately. Why the dog would heel so well we could have walked him down I95 and he would have stuck to us like glue, until we told him it was okay to stop heeling.
One evening when one of my sisters was visiting us and I sat next to her on our sofa bed at about 1:30 in the morning, while Chris was asleep. The sofa bed was opened, yes it was the kind with the bar in the middle of your back. Yeah, yeah, I know, all I can say is I was just married a couple of years and we were poor.
We lived in Bayside, Queens, in a Garden Apartment at the time, that luckily allowed pets.Suddenly my sister points to King and says look at him, he looks stoned on something.
I turned to look at him and he smiled, I swear he smiled, and the he fell over his feet coming to me.
So I freak and jump up. Because King was so well behaved, we never thought he would go up on a dresser pick up an RX bottle, break it open and eat sixty bitter pills.
My husband had lost his job. He loved the job and was very upset and anxious when he lost it. It was such a great job, King was even allowed to work there. My DH's boss whom he cared about, was ill, and he couldn't handle it. So out doctor prescribed him Librium, which I filled and he never took.
Now that bottle sat there for months and no one paid any attention to it, until King did something so out of character. I never thought to worry about hiding pills he never even snatched food from the table. He was a gentleman. We may never know why it happened but it did.
It was now after two am. and I was crazy with worry. Sixty pills! My God he'd eaten sixty pills! Frantically I called in the phone book for a vet in Queens that was open for emergencies. Luckily there was one not to far from us.
My DH, you might ask,well forget him, he was still stuck back at 'what happened?' And since he and King were very close buddies, my DH's brain shut down and he just stood there. My sister convinced him to go and dress and I threw a coat over my nightgown then we were out the door.
Now let me tell you what, King was having the time of his life. High as a kite and very happy, he kissed me a lot and kept tripping over his feet and falling down. But he seemed to thoroughly enjoy it.

Finally at the vet, they gave him some medicine and when he heard the plastic wrapper on the needle, he perked up, "Mmmrrrrrrrr. Candy you say, that sounds like candy." Sorry King, not candy.
Anyways we ended up having to leave him so they could keep an eye one him. For at least a week. Now every day I called to see how he was doing. Every day they said he was still stoned and should stay there longer for observation. Well days progressed into weeks and we missed him badly. So we decided after four weeks that we wanted to go see him and hopefully take him home. The vet even stopped charging us for boarding after a week, which was weird too.
It was time to go get our boy. With my medical background I felt confident that after a month of doing well, I could handle watching him.
When we got to the place we were greeted by guess who, King at the front door. He had the run of the place, they were crazy about him, and they didn't want him to go home. He'd been helping pets, even cats, that were afraid to be calm. He played with the puppies and kittens. The doggie Florence Nightingale, he even had a bird that flew and landed on his head as I stood there.
Okay. Now I know my dog is great, but he's my dog and I had to convince them to let me take him. They loved him.
So we brought him home and he staggered around for a total of seven weeks. Shocked the hell outta me.

The dog had a way with people too, and he made friends with them easily. But I never expected him to take over the vets office. I never expected to have a dog as great as King and I will miss him for as long as I live. I think Junior would have gotten along with him very well.

Thanks again Dayana for having me. I so appreciate being invited.

What a wonderfully heartwarming story, Mary, thank you so much for sharing this story with us.


More about Mary M. Ricksen:

Tripping Through Time ISBN#1-60154-392-1

"The Tuatha de Danaan and the Celtic ring linger in my imagination"
The Long and the Short of It

www.maryricksen.com

"Know that love is truly timeless"