Mandy

Mandy is horribly gun shy. She is not a hunting dog. She's a herding dog, and not very good around loud noises, unless it's hooves on the ground...

Yesterday, our neighbor decided to do some target practice with a muzzle loader, because he's going muzzle loader deer hunting and he wanted to make sure that his particular muzzle loader shot straight and true (are you kidding me?) and if not, what allowances he'd have to make to adjust his aim so that he hit his target.

So it's a "one shot wonder" after another.

Mandy stays in the bathroom, hiding under the loo, while this is going on. She shakes and shivers as if cold, when really she's just terrified of getting shot.

So 6pm comes around and she's still not come out of the bathroom, even though the shooting has long since past-it's dark outside now, too dark to see a target with any accuracy, but she's not coming out. Seven pm comes around, and I'm thinking "what's up with my dog? She still hasn't come out of the bathroom!"

You see, by now, I've forgotten that the neighbor has been shooting all day.

Eight pm rolls about and I finally call her. It's well past time for her last daily potty out of doors, and she's still not come out, requesting to go outside. When I walk in the restroom, she's still hiding, but she's tapping her tail, and I am able to convince her to come out of there, but she's reluctant to go outdoors. I have to tug and pull at her collar, and finally get her out doors, but all she does is shiver by the door waiting to come right back in.

She never did go potty last night, and I was concerned that she would potty in the house from all the stress, but there was nothing this morning. However, she was more that happy to make her bladder gladder this morning. I think she slept with my hubby all night, curled up in a ball on the edge of the bed next to him.

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I'm thinking about going in to the office. I'm not sure that I will. I did request today off--gives me a five day weekend, and then I can go in fresh as a daisy on Wednesday. Or I could go today and ask for Friday off, and be home with my hubby. It's a toss-up. But I'm leaning more toward today than Friday, only because I know we'll have Thanksgiving and Christmas.

He feels the crunch big time of a job gone to hell in a handbasket, and not taking it very well. He's concerned about his life, and I understand it so well. I used to work for a shoe store, and they went out of business--it was a fearful time. I was the only support for my little family, because my then husband wasn't hanging on to a job for any length of time--and so when they started going out of business, I felt the crunch to find another job in a New York Minute. The stress killed the relationships, and pretty much everyone hated each other by the time I got my first job with the State Of Michigan. It was nearly a seamless move, but the damage had been done. Such a sad time for me, after all the hard work I put in to try to keep everything together. He probably feels like a misfit, and knows that I don't make enough money to support this household, not even if I didn't have the bills that I maintain mostly with disposable income (as he calls it). So there will be many things given up when his job is gone, and you might not see me again, unless I head to the library and use the computer there.

So I'll be making allowances at some point. There's always the chance that the government will step in and help out, but then again--maybe not, and this will not only affect me, but my mother as well, as she draws on my father's pension which is also through General Motors. So my whole family will be affected. I'm not sure how all this will pan out, but I'm hoping and praying really hard that things work out for the best.