Gagging The Dog

This is a little story about the time I gagged my own dog when I was an impetuous teenager.

The reason I needed my beloved mutt mute was because whenever I left, he barked and howled. Since it was imperative daddy didn't know I was planning on leaving for a few hours later that night, I needed to figure out a way to silence that little lamb. The reason I didn't want my dad to know I was leaving being that I was grounded.

I was grounded because I had recently come home a bit past curfew time. Quite a bit past as a matter of fact. Enough past to have earned me a month's grounding. But that is a different story entirely and I'm telling about how one Friday night I gagged my dog.

I was planning my escape because of a hurried phone conversation earlier in the day in which the irresistible words of, "Big party at swimming hole. Hot guys. Meet me down the road midnight tonight ", were briefly exchanged. 

Since the dog slept by the side of my bed, slipping out past him was out of the question. In my infinite teenage wisdom I decided that lacking a real muzzle, I would have to improvise with a large wide rubber band I happened to have recently acquired.

After waiting long enough to insure that I was the only mouse stirring round the house, I gently wound the rubber band round my beloved pet's muzzle, just snug enough to keep him from barking and howling, but not so tight that he couldn't work it off with his muzzle without much effort. My theory being by the time he got the rubber band worked off he would have lost the urge to howl and go back to sleep. Then I slipped out the window, along the garden path, and skipped down the road to where a car was waiting. The party was in full swing when we got there. But what two petting rules of my daddy's I bent, and stretched to the breaking point, before the party was over, isn't what is important here.

What is important to this story, is that upon arriving home, I was met by the site of my father's face staring at me as I climbed back in my bedroom window. The reason I was greeted by that sight upon thrusting my head through the window is that the dog had become irritated at the rubber band round his nose, and too lazy to take what little effort it would have taken worry it off, he had awakened my father by jumping on the bed and sticking his bound muzzle in his face.

Naturally after taking the rubber band off my dog's muzzle, he checked to see if I was safe. He said later it didn't surprise him none too much to fine me gone. He also said he knew nobody but me muzzled that mutt. Wolf, the dog I gagged, and so named because of his habit of howling whenever I left even the room as a puppy, was a very large collie dog. He was no Lassie though. His disposition being that of a junk yard dog around anyone but family. Which is what lead my father to suspect he knew who's fair hand wound that rubber band around that long muzzle.

The end result of this whole little escapade being, I got another two months tacked onto my sentence, and spent the next 45 days on good behavior. I wound up with a reduced sentenced