{"id":505,"date":"2014-12-17T05:24:56","date_gmt":"2014-12-17T05:24:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/franchlife.com\/?p=505"},"modified":"2014-12-20T06:57:44","modified_gmt":"2014-12-20T06:57:44","slug":"what-just-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/?p=505","title":{"rendered":"Did That Just Happen?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was sprawled out on the ground. \u00a0I felt the wet grass of the pasture soaking my pajamas. \u00a0I could smell a pile of fresh horse manure nearby. \u00a0I blinked my eyes as the raindrops pelleted my face. \u00a0Charlie was standing over me looking guilty and repentant. \u00a0How did I not see that coming? \u00a0He must have watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving<\/em> with our children at some point. \u00a0Clearly, he knew what happened to Charlie Brown when Lucy pulled the football away. \u00a0Charles Schulz, the founder of the Peanuts<\/em> comic, once explained why Charlie Brown never got to kick that football, \u201cYou can\u2019t create humor out of happiness.\u201d \u00a0Well, I certainly wasn\u2019t happy lying in that muddy pasture with Charlie looking down on me. \u00a0 So, this better make you laugh. \u00a0Charlie had sidestepped just in time so my kick didn\u2019t make contact with him. \u00a0I had lost my balance. \u00a0Thud. \u00a0Just like Charlie Brown. \u00a0The \u201cLucy\u201d in this story is a Great Pyrenees dog named Charlie. \u00a0He was a rescue that we were trying to rehabilitate. \u00a0He had been abandoned and left to roam and survive on his own in a rural Texas town. \u00a0Sadly, our patience with him was wearing thin because he was killing and eating a chicken every few months. \u00a0Each time he seemed to understand his wrongdoing and his sheepish eyes convinced me that he\u2019d never do it again. \u00a0Yet, it went on. \u00a0The first chicken he ate, leaving only feathers behind, was named \u201cFence.\u201d \u00a0Yes, you know, the one our four-year-old would play hide-n-seek with for hours. \u00a0The heartache of telling her what happened to Fence was still fresh in my mind that day. \u00a0I will always remember her carefully voicing each word, one at a time, as she caught her breath between her cries. \u00a0\u201cNot (sniffle) Fence (sniffle), she (sniffle) was (sniffle) my (sniffle) best (sniffle), best (sniffle) friend (weep).” \u00a0That day, out of the corner of my eye and through a back window, I\u00a0spotted\u00a0Charlie in the pasture with yet another chicken in his mouth. \u00a0Without hesitation, I sprinted out the door, still in my pajamas, into the pouring rain and through the pasture gate full speed toward the dog. \u00a0He saw me coming. \u00a0He immediately dropped the chicken (it\u2019s still alive!) as I planted my foot on the ground and swung the back leg toward him. \u00a0He moved just one step to the left and I missed him completely. I don\u2019t remember the last time I fell that hard on the ground. \u00a0As the dust settled and I sat up, I glanced over making eye contact with the stunned chicken. \u00a0I know that\u00a0at least one time in my life I thought\u00a0the same thing as a chicken. \u00a0\u201cDid that really just happen?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was sprawled out on the ground. \u00a0I felt the wet grass of the pasture soaking my pajamas. \u00a0I could smell a pile of fresh horse manure nearby. \u00a0I blinked my eyes as the raindrops pelleted my face. \u00a0Charlie was standing over me looking guilty and repentant. \u00a0How did I not see that coming? \u00a0He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":523,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions\/523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}