Apr 15 2009
From the Past
I ran across a photo today that made me laugh, my youngest son was about 4 years old and he was riding his bicycle in our back yard, he had a jacket on and he was wearing his “cow-boots” riding an old bicycle. Cute, but not funny right, well, his head was shaved bald, not completely though, he had areas that had a little stubble and other places that was even with his head. That was funny because of how it happened to be bald.
We had moved from Rochester, New York and into a small rural community outside of Tucson, Arizona and the kids just loved being able to go outside and play, we had a large back yard and they had plenty of outdoor toys, so they spent a lot of time outside. We not only moved kids across country we also had animals, four dogs, two boxers and two shih tsu’s, a guinea pig and two cockatiels. The shih tsu’s have long hair and we soon found out that even though we did have some grass on the property we also had a lot of plant life that is less than friendly for people or animals. I really do not know the name of some of the nasty little things that we soon learned were our biggest enemies. I loved walking barefoot, but that was a mistake if you did not want to step on these thorn-like objects, not to mention that they attached themselves in the dogs long hair and would get carried into the house where you should be able to walk barefoot. The poor dogs would step on them as well and I would have to pull them out of their paws and hair. Some of them we learned are called goat-heads, and another one that caused us a lot of problems I never did find out what it was called but it was round and grew in the grass from a vine, it was round and had thorns that curled a little at the tip, so when it went into your skin it held on. The goat head looks like a triangular piece of wood about the size of the tip of your little finger and it has three narrow pointed tips, so when you step on it it goes in deep and sometimes breaks off in your foot, they can penetrate the soles of shoes as well.
With that said, the poor dogs with the long hair were always coming in with them tangled in the hair of their feet and legs, if I didn’t set down right then and go over them from head to toe I ended up paying the price, they would chew them out of their hair and drop them on the furniture or floor, real nice to sit down on!! It did not take me long to decide that the upkeep was too much pulling them out of the hair. I dreaded that job, ending up with them in my fingers just to get them untangled out of the hair day after day. I had enough one day and pulled out my dog clippers and decided to shave the dogs so they had short hair, the boxers had far less incidents with the prickers.
I started shaving the dogs and ended up feeling ill in the middle of it, so, I left the clippers unplugged but sitting on the floor along with the hair I had been placing in a plastic bag. Went into the living-room and just wanted to lay down for awhile hoping I would feel better soon. Instead, I fell asleep, I woke up to the sound of the clippers in the kitchen, got up and looked at my lovely little boy with the clippers in one hand and a handful of his cut hair in the other. OMG, what did you do, he had curly blond hair, I cannot put that hair back on your head!!
I took the clippers and my youngest son to the bathroom so I could try and make his cut look decent. Ha, Ha, I was wrong, he was a wiggle-worm and every-time I turned the clippers on, he would start squirming and I dug the clippers all of the way to the head, so he had digs all over his head from me trying to right a wrong. It took forever to finish and I hated the outcome, you could see the longer and shorter areas from quite the distance. When we were going to church he was so ashamed that he decide to wear a hat on his head.
Thank goodness his hair grew back in quickly, I did the best I could and decided that cutting people hair is different than cutting the dogs hair. I never made that mistake again either leaving, anything down within reach! I finished the dogs and was glad I did, and so were they, the whole time I was in the bathroom they were hiding. From then on I kept the dogs hair short.
That picture was certainly worth a thousand word!!
