I didn’t sleep much last night.

Charlie the cat got in a fight with the in-law’s dog, Maggie, and while Maggie could have literally swallowed Charlie in two bites, it was Charlie who did the damage.

Not that it wasn’t somewhat warranted. Charlie is NOT used to the environment at their house. He was supposed to have the front room all to himself as he got used to the place. But Maggie is a big dog who wanted to say hello in the most direct way possible and stormed into the room making a b-line for the cat.

I didn’t actually see what happened, I was in another room, but I did see the aftermath.

Maggie: 80 pounds of lovable bruiser who does not know her own strength.

Charlie: 12 pounds of frightened cat who, even at his best, is a bit claw happy.

Charlie did some basic reconstruction of Maggie’s face and there was blood every where – all Maggie’s.

We cleaned up the scene, didn’t take any pictures (we were more concerned about Maggie’s face) and then cleaned up the animals. By the amount of blood on Charlie you would have thought he had a gaping wound on him, but no it was all Maggie blood. Rene even said, “The dog bleeds like she’s in a Quentin Tarantino movie.” 

We cleaned up her face, slathered her in ointment, and she lay, very sad that she and Charlie were not friends, for about thirty minutes before she tried to come into the room again.

So you might be wondering why I’m going into great detail about a cat and dog fight – something that could happen any day of the week.

Here’s a picture of Maggie this morning, on the mend and not too much worse for wear:

Maggie is a pit bull.

Eighty pounds of dog who is strong and determined and, by her physical features, could have killed Charlie many times over – but she didn’t because that was never what she wanted.

Pit Bulls get such a bad rap just because bad people like to teach them to do bad things.

Maggie is bull headed (no pun intended) and a little on the “simple” side, but all she wanted to do was love Charlie. It’s just when you see eighty pounds of dog coming at you in a hurry it’s easy to be frightened. And that’s a big reason why I wanted to address this today. Fear gets in the way of a lot of things, progress and understanding being two of them. And it isn’t just about Pit Bulls (although I do hope that one day soon Farankie won’t be banned from a whole bunch of cities in the U.S. and countries abroad) it’s about a lot of things. Sometimes it worth taking some time to reflect on the things that scare you so you can actually explore why they scare you. When you get past the scariness of it you can start to understand it, and if you understand it then you are that much closer to defeating it.

What do you fear? Would you rearrange it’s face if you had the chance? Let me know in the comments.

See you next time.