What the hail

Last night I was at my parents' house when it started raining. Ever since their children began moving out my parents have been ending up with more and more dogs. Right now "little dogs" means Winky the one eyed terror and Ace, who is bright but the opposite of brave. "Big dogs" includes Heidi and Rowdy, 13 and 12 year old collies, and Barrett(think 50 caliber), a canine cross between a rock and a stegosaurus who mostly just knows how to wag his tail and carry things in his mouth. Heidi is incredibly sweet, but pretty much senile. The little dogs were already inside, terrified of the storm, but the big dogs were out in it. I went to the back door to let them in just as it started hailing. The boys were waiting on the porch and came in as soon as the door opened, but poor Heidi was in the middle of the yard, stretching her nose out to sniff the hailstone that had just bounced off of her head. In the time it took me to say "Come here Heidi girl, come in" three more had hit her and she was getting more confused. It did make her start wagging her tail to think I was coming out to play, though.

Not having any better ideas, I started across the yard to get her, accompanied by Barrett, toy in mouth, and Ace. Ace was too scared of the storm to get more than a couple feet from me. Barrett doesn't sweat the small stuff when there is a chance that something might happen. Once we got past the porch Ace learned two things, 1. Hail hurts when you only weigh 10 pounds, and 2. As long as he stood under Barrett he was safe.

The hail was getting bigger as we made our way to Heidi, who seemed to find us curious. I tried asking her to come in again and she yelped as a big one hit her in the nose. I still wasn't smart enough to think of any good ideas, so I leaned over her and took one behind my ear. Now that she had an umbrella she was ready to go inside, so away we went.

It wasn't until we were inside and wiping the rain off that I noticed something was missing and looked back out the window. There, in the middle of the hail storm, stood Barrett, still holding his toy and wanting to play, and Ace, unwilling to step out from under him.