[Dailydrool] The Basset 500

[Karen Cannon]

Our Lucie does the Basset 500 when she comes in from the rain or snow and has to be dried off with towels. After she gets the toweling down, she is released like some sort of spring and does the 500 several times around the house at top speed, crashing into the front door at the end of a skid, tossing the dining room chairs while going through them.  She collapses into breathless heap at the end and then has a nap.

However, nothing tops the Basset 500 that our first Basset, name of HP (short for Hush Puppy - what can I say? the shoes were very popular and used basset hounds in their advertising.)  My husband had just given HP a bath in the laundry tub in the basement.  DH had just finished drying HP with a dozen towels.  Now, you have to know that the dog was very large...at his top weight, he weighed 90 pounds and was not fat, just very, very long.
So...having been released from being dried off, HP took off at top speed to race around the unfinished basement.  He did a couple of laps, then picked up speed and went off to do another lap when he went wide on a corner and hit my husband's 10 gallon vat of red wine in primary fermentation.  This was DH's very first batch of wine from our home-grown grapes.
You know what's coming, right?  Yep, HP hit that vat at warp speed, the vat went over, spilled everywhere. On the dog, all over the floor.  Of course, being a basement floor, it's not level, so the wine went in places we didn't want it to go. Did I mention it was red wine?

The results?  Hours spent mopping up.  HP had to have another bath. We had to have showers.  The basement smelled like fermented grapes for weeks.  DH only brewed another batch of wine after that.  Now we buy our wine from the store and give away the grapes in exchange for jelly.

We still laugh about that incident which happened 36 years ago.  We miss HP, but we still have the grapes.

Thanks for listening.  Healing drools to all sick houndies and their slaves.

Karen & Lucie (Devil Dog)
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