“I barely tapped it!” he said.
Up next was our middle child. He and I hopped into the car to go wherever it was we were going. He threw it in reverse, turned the wheel and backed up…right into his brother’s car.
We looked at each other at the same time thinking, “What just happened…?”
His car - “Phoenix” - was barely scraped. His brother’s car - “Pearl” - that had already survived a fender bender on route 40 and damage in a tornado (really) once again had a date with the body shop.
It was only a matter of time until the youngest had her big moment. We expected it, but we did not anticipate her one-upping (maybe even more than one) her brothers.
And while she learns to navigate the roads - and driveway - with her ride “Sheila” our senior dog is learning to navigate life wearing the Cone of Shame.
Braxton is now an “old dog” and he is not learning any new tricks. In fact, he himself has become tricky. He was subjected to the Cone of Shame due to having a minor procedure on his foot. Since then he has been gnawing on his wound and the healing process has been, well, a really really long process. The cone of shame is the best defense against his itchy wound.
The dog is like the proverbial bull in a China shop now. He knocks things over, runs into walls and people; he has no concept of the size of his conehead. And despite the cone being “clear” I’m left to wonder if it hinders his peripheral vision. Why you ask? Because surely he saw my daughter start backing Sheila out of the driveway. Surely, before he saw her, he must have heard her honking the horn.
Nah. None of that.
But she saw him. She creeped backwards ever slowly, waiting for him to move like he always does. And he finally did, but he was not in a “safe zone.”
She burst into the house, “MOM! I just hit the dog!”
“Which one?” I asked in a panic knowing it didn’t matter, whichever dog it was would require a call to one brother or the other.
“Braxton! I didn’t see him,” she said.
“You didn’t see the dog?! Wearing a giant blue cone?! In the driveway?!” I yelled in disbelief as I went to find Conehead.
“He’s okay!” she said, no less exasperated than she was when she whipped the door open.
And he was. He came bounding - well, he’s like 13 so he doesn’t really do that anymore - in the door behind her right on cue.
I let out a breath of relief. Whew! Crisis averted.
“I’m pulling up the camera,” I said. “I need to see this.”
And there in the footage was Conehead ignoring Sheila’s bleating horn until the last minute. When he finally moved to the side, my daughter backed up to turn around. Braxton though had moved to the front corner of the vehicle and put his head down to sniff something.
She didn’t see the dog. Or the cone. She slowly - thank God - took her foot off the brake. Sheila edged forward and Braxton? Well, he received what I call after watching the video “a gentle nudge.”
While he was not hurt, except for maybe his pride, it did give him a good scare.
When she realized what had happened, our daughter threw the car into park and jumped out of the vehicle. Seeing he was okay, she went straight into, “What the h*ll are you doing??” mode, giving the poor dog a verbal spanking for not paying attention.
Let’s just say she may have also received a verbal spanking for not paying attention.
All in all it was the perfect first accident: no injuries, no damage and no making this stuff up.
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