The Dog Dinner

The Dog Dinner, with thanks to Jess Wilson and for Michelle O'Neill and Riley.

Last night it finally happened.

Back in December, Jess Wilson asked if I’d donate a signed book for a contest she was running to raise money for a dog. I’m always a sucker for a good dog story, so I agreed.

In fact, I’ve been around good dog stories most all my life. My first dog stories involved beagles, because they were all around my grandparents down in Georgia. When I was just a kid, we had log trucks passing the house, and the beagles would come out from under the porch and chase the trucks. As you can imagine, every now and then, they’d catch one, and with all the weight of those logs, the result was a pretty two-dimensional beagle. But we were nothing if not resourceful, and we dried them on the clothesline and staged contests to see who could wing a saildog the farthest.

We had a pretty good thing going till the Wham-O people came along with the Frisbee.

But that’s another story. Last month’s story was about autism and service dogs – an improbable but seemingly legitimate combination. Michelle ONeill, another blog friend from Cleveland, was raising money to get one of these dogs for her kid, Riley.

The trouble was, fancy dogs are expensive.

Jess started by taking bids for the book. It brought in a few bucks, but she got a better idea – raffling a night out with me. Yeah – I know what you’re thinking – Who in her right mind would pay for that?? But there’s a sucker born every minute, I guess, because it worked. And it didn’t end there. Jess somehow enticed a dozen females from all over the country to come out here for Wives Gone Wild with me tagging along.

We had Pixie Mama, Michelle; Jenn , Judith; Rhemashope , Tanya; Kyra , Kim; Petra and even Mama Mara. And that wasn’t all – but I pasted the list from Jess’s blog so if you want to find the others, look there.

http://jesswilson.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/i-cant-wait/

Moms came from all over the country. One even brought edible cow pies. The amazing thing was, most had never met in person until last night. I wrote a story on the power of the Internet and moms; this event demonstrated that for sure.
http://jerobison.blogspot.com/2009/01/supermoms-and-mom-empowerment.html


And the mosr remarkable part was that they shook a dog out of it. Michelle drove all the way up from Ohio to participate. Here she is:

The action heated up as the night wore on. In this next shot you can see that Kyra has found something tasty in Jess’s ear.



Moments later, the leg wrestling championship began.

Drama Mama – who was supposed to appear in person – called just as the grease started to fly.

Three moms watch, moments before the table was upended into their laps.

You’d have thought the restaurant would’ve kicked us all out right then, but times are hard. When they finally gave us the boot at 1AM we trooped back to Jess’s place, where the moms changed into pajamas, opened specially purchased Wine Coolers, and got ready to start Round Two.

I left while I still could. I distracted them with photos and slipped out into the cool night air. I will leave the rest of the storytelling to them.

All I can say is, you should’ve seen it. I wish I had taken more pictures. I'll bet I could've sold some of them back for some real money.