Remember Old Yeller?

I do - well, sort of. I haven't thought of that book for years.... Our family had some excitement over this past week that brought that story back with a vengeance. Monday afternoon, the girls and Tucker (our 95-pound black lab) were in our backyard playing while I worked in the kitchen. Tucker isn't one to bark much, but he started having a fit, and the girls were yelling for me. I walked out the back door to see a black dog on the outside of our fence. Tucker and this dog were nose to nose through the fence posts, and Tucker was barking rather angrily. This is not his temperament at all - he's a big baby - so I walked over to shoo the dog away. It didn't run at my approach, so I told the girls to stay inside the fence, while I went out of the gate to run the dog off. After I walked out and closed the gate behind me, the stray dog turned, and I saw horrible damage to it's jaw. It was basically missing half of it's jaw, and I could see a gunshot wound to it's snout. My first thought was that the poor dog must have cancer or something that had destroyed it's jaw... but not having ever seen the dog in the neighborhood before, I decided that the best thing I could do was just get it out of my yard. It wasn't wearing a collar, so there were no tags to try and read (now I thank God for that... I might have tried to read them to find an owner). The dog wasn't aggressive towards me, but tucked it's tail and trotted slowly off, in and out of our garage, then across the street and into the corn field that is behind the houses directly across from us. I didn't think anything else about it until a few hours later.... my neighbor called me to let me know that the state police and animal control were out looking for this dog... it was rabid. My heart went into my throat! After saying a loud prayer of thanks for God keeping me safe as I went out within a foot of this dog.... I thought of Tucker. He was in this dog's face, pitching a fit.... of course, now I knew that he was behaving this was because he knew something was wrong. He was protecting us. I called the vet just to double check on the possibility of rabies being transmitted through saliva without a bite occurring.... to quickly put your mind at ease - Tucker is fine. However, our neighborhood quickly became a not-so-safe place to be. The dog showed up in several backyards over the next couple of days - and managed to escape police and animal control many times. We didn't let Tucker out without going with him, and the girls stayed inside for the most part. We did go bike riding on Tuesday afternoon, and twice saw the state policeman that was patrolling our neighborhood! Quite the excitement for this quiet, sleepy little farming community. As of today, I have not heard if the dog was caught or found... I can't imagine that it would be able to survive for long with it's injuries. Pili and Adie had to learn that not all dogs are nice. They also learned that Tucker would protect them if he needed to.... that made Mommy's heart happy. We thank God for His protection during this little episode, and it makes us even more thankful for the "normal" quiet that we enjoy here in Shippensburg!