As many of my readers know by now, we have a dog named Mario who has become rather notorious. We adopted him through the Bainbridge-Decatur County Humane Society. He was one of a litter of six puppies whose mother died shortly after giving birth and the puppies all went to foster care to be bottle fed.  His cute little face appeared on the website and I couldn’t get him out of my mind…..so we asked to see him. One look and we were hooked. He was so little and cute. That was two years ago.

Today he is a well-developed, beautiful, hard-headed, muscular dog that weighs 70 pounds. His heritage is basically unknown, except that his mother was a Boxer.

He has been my husband’s dog from day one. He is the only person Mario minds or listens to. They are very attached to each other.

Ron is a playful person who likes to tease the dog, (he calls it playing) with things like lawn rakes or wheeled items. Consequently Mario goes bonkers whenever he sees the garbage can being rolled to the street, or the wheelbarrow in use in the back yard.

The point of all this is, be careful how you train, teach and play with your puppy.

Sunday, as we were preparing to do some tree trimming, my husband took the lawn rake from the garage. Mario came alive. He ran up to Ron and body-slammed him, causing Ron to land on his left hip on the concrete driveway. We were immediately alarmed, as the pain was so severe he couldn’t move for a bit. We were afraid he had broken his hip. When he could finally get to his feet, I helped him into the house, where we applied an ice pack and dosed him with Advil.

On Monday morning, following a restless night, it was discovered that he had a large swelling on that hip and buttox; although the skin was not discolored. He said he found it painful to sit for any length of time. After a call to the doctor, he went to the hospital to have the hip X-rayed. Luckily no bones were broken.

And, how did Mario react to all this? He tried to lick Ron’s face while he was down and out, but when he was rebuffed, he went and laid down beside the driveway, with his head between his front paws. He looked really sorry as he kept watch.

We can only hope he settles down and quits jumping before someone is seriously injured.