Buttermilk Biscuit

Okay, so he's really not made of buttermilk, but you know, buttermilk biscuits really are the best.

Biscuit's fine, though, and thank you to everyone for your heartfelt emails, texts, tweets and comments. Yesterday was obviously a rough day for him, but we kept a close eye on him. Considering how sore I'm sure he was, he still made it to the front porch to check on Nonner when he heard him cry once. The rest of the day he pretty much laid on the carport and whimpered a lot. Family members who are pet owners and avid pet lovers said that baby aspirin was okay to give a puppy, but considering we weren't sure at that point about internal bleeding, we decided not to go that route.

I know that some of you - heck, maybe many of you - would've had him to the vet within minutes, but well, when you're having trouble paying the electric bill, you kind of have to weigh having electricity against a $300+ vet bill. We opted for power. You might not agree, but you don't have to. We did what we felt was best. We love our puppy, but we also like to keep our kids fed and stuff. It's kind of one of those things we agreed to when we had kids.

Our normally wound-up pup was so incredibly low-key yesterday and that worried me, but when the kids got home from school he immediately started wagging his tail. That right there was when I knew he was gonna be okay. The bond between boy and dog is a strong one (remember Sounder, Old Yeller, Old Dan and Little Ann?) and Sam dropped his backpack as soon as he reached the yard, sat right down on the sidewalk and patted his legs for Biscuit. Biscuit slowly climbed into his lap, sighed and laid his head down. Those two are tight. Of course, through my tears I found my camera and snapped some pics, but you'll have to wait for those because I'm on the desktop tonight and the laptop is the one with the cool little slot for the SD card.

Kady asked why he was moving so slowly. Abby patted her on the shoulder and said, "Sis, you don't remember it, but after daddy was hit by that car, back when you were a baby, he moved pretty slow for a few days, too." Well put, Ab.

Biscuit slept through the night last night, crawling into Jake's old barrel to sleep, something he has never done. I guess he never wanted to infringe up on Jake's territory, even though they never met, but ya know, desperate times call for desperate measures and he sought the refuge of the old blue barrel. This morning, first thing, I went out to check on him and bless his little puppy heart, those first few moves after being still all night were rough, but he stretched and made his way to me. I patted his head, praised him for being so brave and his happy tail-wagging once again assured me he was going to be okay. In fact, after he worked out the first-morning stiffness he didn't even limp.

We drove around last night looking for the car and after travelling the whole mile section we concluded there was no other white hatchback other than the presumed perpetrator (which sounds very CSI, doesn't it?). While we're redneck, we don't do vigilante justice and our neighbor is completely safe so don't worry about having to take up a collection to bail us out of jail. However, first thing Monday morning I'm putting in a call to my county commissioner to see about having a bus stop sign posted between our house and the neighbor's house to the east, since we both have kids that ride the bus. I'm also going to double check the rural road speed limit and see about getting a speed limit sign, too. Heck, I'll call whoever I have to to see to it that people on our road just slow the heck down and pay attention.

While it is sad that Biscuit got hit, the issue foremost in my mind is my children. Those kids get on and off that bus five days a week. Many of the neighbors have complained about the speeds that some people drive down our road. While there are only two houses with kids on our particular mile, there are more further up. I have nearly been hit head-on twice by neighbors (yes, neighbors - I know what they drive) who were flying around the curve below our house, right down the middle of the road. In fact, one neighbor has even followed those people home to personally remind them that even county roads have speed limits, bless his cantankerous old heart. Thankfully, our driveway is 1/10 of a mile and the kids can't go further than halfway down on their bikes when they play, so I don't have to worry about them other than bus time where the road is concerned, but really, the simple fact is, people drive too fast out here and it needs to stop. Wow, that was a long, ugly sentence. I hope it made sense.

I'm just glad our puppy's okay and my kids are okay. It was bad, but when you think about what could've happened ..... well, I just don't like to do that. So I won't.