Man's best friend--children, not so much.

I had just pulled into my driveway last night, having met my husband at O'Hare, when my phone rang. My grandson had been bitten by the family dalmatian, and wanted me to meet them at the ER. Again. I yelled something about putting the dog to sleep, crashed about as I took my husband's dinner out of the oven, and cursed the dog. My husband, ever rational, pointed out that a dog is an animal, and therefore will sometimes revert to type, and that a muzzle should perhaps have been used. I stuck to the position that if my dog bit my child, its next outing would be to the vet.
I threw crayons and colored pencils in my purse, grabbed a handful of computer paper, and drove to the emergency room. The image in my head was of last time, six months ago, which involved stitches to the lip, and much screaming. I was glad to see that the latest wound was a single triangular puncture to the cheek, but even that required painful cleaning and dressing. The injured grandson behaved pretty well, but I noticed that as his twin was coloring, the pictures changed from being beautifully colored to being done entirely in black crayon. I don't think he was simply being sloppy.
So what now? There is a one-year-old dog whose fate is in the balance. Leaving the ER, my daughter explained: "It's as if I've just discovered that a loved family member is, in fact, an abuser." This story has no way of ending happily.