Dog Story

 Everybody is talking about dogs nowadays, so here's a tale from the archives.

    One of the puppies, evidently intrigued by the colorful fly attached to Uncle Joe's fishpole which was kept in a corner of the barn, batted at it playfully and somehow got the fishhook inserted all the way through its front paw. It was yelping in pain and my mother cut the line from the pole and tried to pull the fishhook out of the pup's footpad, but true to its name, it was hooked, and firmly, with those multiple barbs not allowing it to be pulled back through. The fish was hooked.

   Back then, all unsolvable problems were taken to the front porch, and my mother in consult with Sara as to what to do. No success in backtracking the hook from the paw of the pup, who was now calm but crying piteously. Then a customer pulled up to the store, George Kagel's brother Herman. He quickly assessed the situation, went to his vehicle, retrieved a pair of pliers, snapped the protruding barbed section of the hook off, and then pulled the straight section out of the paw. Emergency medicine at its finest. The pup was back to normal.