I Think My Dog Gave Me a Hickey

I think my dog gave me a hickey.

I haven’t looked too closely in the mirror, but they’re telling me it’s there.

Yesterday morning, taking Fargo out so she could take a leak—you should know, for context, that I physically pick my dog up multiple times a day at the merest hint that she might empty her bladder, and that every time, with her in my arms, I step over the baby gate, walk down the hall, navigate the kitchen, wrangle open the back door, slip on a pair of Birkenstocks, walk down the two steps, and half set her down half fumble her into the pit of loose dirt, weeds, and shredded leaves that fills in our backyard—Fargo, wound up and causing trouble already in the indoor arena, bit me on the neck.

Hard.

I yelped. It was more a yell than a yelp, but they say you should yelp, so I’m saying I yelped. Really, I yelled. I yelled, “OW! DAMMIT FARGO! THAT HURT!” And she happily turned her attention to nibbling my ear. Keep the romance going, I guess.

Anyway, she peed, she zoomed, I ran back and forth across the yard with her chasing me so that 1) she would get very tired and 2) she wouldn’t eat the little berries we think are crabapples and if they are crabapples are poisonous to dogs, because the seeds and stems will evidently turn into cyanide inside dogs’ bodies?? I don’t know. It was a quick google.

Then, later in the day, after she awoke from her afternoon nap (which was much shorter than usual, possibly because her morning nap was deeper than usual because the running back and forth across the yard accomplished the goal of tiring her out), I was carrying her out again, and her head was in a similar spot, and daughter of a bitch that dog bit me again in the exact same spot she bit me in the morning. And it was another firm bite.

So anyway, if I show up with a hickey when I’m back on TikTok, it was a dog who did it, and it was my dog, and no, I did not ask her to do it.