Friday Bloody Friday (Not For The Faint of Heart)

Looks innocent, doesn't he? One brown eye. One blue eye. Responds to direction well. Generally an all-around likable dog. Not the slightest bit afraid of strangers or other animals or thunderstorms. (SFX: Record screech) TRY AGAIN.

Our dear pooch Becks has suddenly developed an aversion to Mother Nature. And by "aversion" I mean a 100-mile-an-hour-panting, lap sitting (nevermind the 55 pounds of fur), cram-self-under-basement-stairs-induced aversion (read: PANIC) of thunderstorms. And it all came to a horrifying crescendo on Friday night, circa 11:30pm.

Typically during storms, Beckham is relegated to the laundry room where he cozily lays under the stairs and waits out the pounding. But the squalls that hit last week birthed this frail alter-ego of Becks that led us to lock him in the laundry room with the lights off. So he attempted to break through the drywall. We opted to rebuild his doggie cage and stuck him in. So he broke out in the matter of 5 minutes. We put him back in his doggie cage, complete with duct tape and bungee cords to secure it shut... And he showed up in the guest bedroom (where Brad and I had taken cover and attempted to get some much-needed rest) 15 minutes later. That's when all hell broke lose.

Becks looked as though he had crossed the path of an angry Lennox Lewis and was covered from head to toe in blood. And so was our house. And the cabinets. And the floors. And some of the walls. And the basement. After near fainting, Brad and I sprung into action assessing wounds (couldn't find any aside from a small cut in his mouth), pulling out mops and various other cleaning items and making a late night stop at the 24-hour vet. Verdict? Aside from his Houdini-like escape from a still locked cage, Becks was diagnosed with extreme anxiety and promptly shot up with a very large prescription of sedation. The blood? All stemmed from that small cut in his mouth. I was sure it was his jugular. Thank goodness a vial of doggie valium also made the trip home with him. Apparently we'll need it.

So the moral of the story is... we have a cage-escaping animal on our hands who I'm ready to market to Ringling Bros. I think I'll call him Crazy Canine.