Strange Sunday

Where do I begin?  

Yesterday was strange.  It was not our typical Sunday.  It started out that way though.  We all slept in a bit, took our time getting ready for church, finished up lessons and Nicole's talk, and then we walked to church.

It's what happened after our Sunday meetings that still has some of us in shock.  It started with the torrential rain that started during the last 10 minutes of church.  I sat in Relief Society listening to the rain pounding against the door.  Remember that I mentioned that we had walked to church?

We waited as long as we could once church was over, hoping that the rain would lighten up a bit.  There were massive raindrops, and the parking lot became a swimming pool.  It was insane!  

The boys decided to make a dash for it and run home, Nicole and I hesitated just a bit, and thanks to that moments hesitation, we were rescued by my friend Keek, who drove us home.  You should have seen Ian's dripping wet face when he- now standing under the shelter of the garage- saw Nicole and I get out of the car.  It was priceless.

However, the craziness doesn't end there.  We ate dinner, and then loaded up the car with frozen cookie dough, from Nicole's cheerleading fundraiser, that needed to be delivered.  We all piled in the car and off we went.

We stopped at my aunt's house and then proceeded to our friend's house in West Valley City.  We were visiting with the family, when their son went outside and yelled back into the house that the neighbor's dogs were killing each other.  We thought it was a joke.  He yelled back inside that there was blood everywhere!

Most of us ran outside to see what was going on.  My little boys were in the basement playing video games oblivious,  I thought, to what was going on.

When I first stepped outside, I heard someone crying.  Some neighbors, who are also old friends of ours, had been out for a Sunday stroll and were the first to come upon the scene.  The crying was coming from their youngest son who had witnessed up close and personal what was going on.

Inside the fenced yard of our friend's neighbors were their two dogs, a pitbull and some other equally menacing looking dog.  Both were white, but were now covered in red blood.  It was awful!  One dog was loosing the fight as we all tried to figure out what to do.  The dogs owners were not home and no one knew how to get a hold of them.

Animal control was called but said that they wouldn't be able to do anything about it until Monday.  Are you serious?  Monday?

A rope was found and somehow the men were able to get a loop around the back end of the Pitbull.  After some time they managed to get it off of the dog underneath and pulled its hind quarters up and over the fence.  After a minute or so, the dog who had gotten the worst of it, wheezing and panting heavily, got up and slowly went into the carport and into its doghouse.  We could see a large gash on it's neck, but there was just too much blood to tell what other injuries it had.

Around that time, I looked back toward my friends house and saw Ian standing on the porch with a very worried look on his face.  I was not sure how much he had seen, but as soon as he saw me look at him, he burst into tears.  I took him in the house and through his tears, he asked me if the other doggies head had fallen off.  I guess he had pretty much seen most of the action.

While comforting him, I realized that Isaac was outside as well.  He had seen the whole thing too- as had Nicole.

Needless to say, we had some traumatized children to deal with.  Nicole seemed to handle it ok, once the shock of what was happening wore off.  They boys not so much.  Ian could not stop talking about it- he kept asking questions and making comments of what he had seen, which upset Isaac who didn't want to talk about it anymore.  He was terrified that he was going to have nightmares. 

We came home, got both boys tucked in, said prayers and our goodnights.  It was not much longer that Ian made his first appearance.  A little while later it was Isaac's turn.  We tucked them both back into bed and some time after I fell asleep, Ian crawled into bed with us.

It was crazy.  It's on everyone's mind today.  That is just something that you don't expect to see.  It was shocking and disturbing and just plain awful.  I feel so bad that my children had to witness something so horrible.  

It was a Sunday that, unfortunately, we won't soon forget.