Tooth and Eye

EYE

Wednesday was a high stress day for both of us. Bingo and I had our presentation to the Lower Division students: K - 5. My library caters to grades 6-12 and I don't usually venture into the rarefied world of the little ones. The Bingo Rules however had to be expounded all over the campus and Lower Division had yet to hear them. They had seen glimpses of him, looking very sweet and cute like he does below (photo by Jan Connors, our library assistant).



But they had no idea of real Bingo, at least of the up close and real Bingo. The convocation started with the Lower Division Director asking the music teacher to sing ONE VERSE of There Was a Farmer Who Had a Dog.... Well, Asking Bonnie to sing one verse of anything is a lesson in futility and the kids were wound up like tops, so once they hit B-I-N-G-O, verse 2 came shooting out, followed closely by verses 3, 4, and 5 and these kids had no clue that in 4 minutes a real, live B-I-N-G-O would be in front of them. I had cut my presentation down with the help of the lower librarian so it was lower friendly, but I was still completely nervous and panicked about talking with them. It went really well. The joke about the teachers being the ones who were the worst about following the rules went over really well. 8-)

When I got to the part about bringing in Bingo, the room got really loud. So we practiced library clapping, which is this weird thing lower librarians do where you wave your hands in the air independently so they swoosh around and make no noise. Gotta love those lower division librarians. They think of everything! I brought Bingo in and he was super and the kids were awesome. Evidently, Lower Division kids are little sponges. I received several emails and facebook posts from parents saying that their children went home and recounted all the rules and details from my presentation and that they remembered things that even some of the parents who had been there didn't.

When I walk down the hallway with him I watch the students make eye contact with me, drop their gaze down to him, see the coat and immediately glance back up to me and keep walking. When I took him on a potty break during a rather full study hall yesterday, we stopped a table to chat and then I had to stop at several tables on the way out. It was like walking with a rock star. He may be the most loved dog ever.

Teeth

They say that hen's teeth are rare, but I've had 7 puppies in my life and I have never seen a puppy tooth. On Thursday, Bingo lost a puppy tooth, a front tooth. Jan, our intrepid, library assistant and amazing photographer actually found the tooth. I saved it for the blog, of course. There was no puppy tooth fairy to leave him a biscuit, though. Oh. I guess that was me. Crap. Well, you can see how really small puppy teeth are. They usually just swallow them, or at least that is what I am told when I ask about them.

When he lost it he had a visitor, one of his most ardent fans, Caroline seen below with him. Since it was a front tooth it was like a little geyser of Tarantino gore. Fortunately, it stopped bleeding fairly quickly and no one got queasy and fainted. As you can see, Caroline wasn't fazed a bit and Bingo has a look that says to me, "Ha, that was a tooth? I felt nothing!"