Gail v. Robespierre

I've been saving this work story for a while because I couldn't come up with good cartoons to go with it. I finally compromised and drew one unnecessarily-detailed cartoon.


Gail
A middle-aged, horse-loving, mini-van-driving, serial-dessert-baking vet assistant and mother of at least two with whom I used to work. (That may not have been a complete sentence but I went out of my way to avoid ending it with a preposition.)

Gail is funny. I really didn't like her at first - she just rubbed me the wrong way. Then one day she walked in with her usual "Good morning, Gracie!" and I suddenly realized that she'd grown on me and without knowing it, I had begun to adore her. The things that used to get under my skin became things that made me laugh, and not in a sarcastic way.

She had a tendency to scurry around the clinic like a chicken with her head cut off, doing random things like "cleaning all the dust pans" or Lemon Pledge-ing the wooden railings.To me, eventually, she seemed to take on a "mother hen" role. (I did not plan for those metaphorical clichés to match so well.) The bottom line is that Gail could be neurotic, but in a stressful work environment it meant a lot to have someone call me "honey" and make me feel appreciated.


Robespierre
A small, bean-shaped French Bulldog puppy who was born with a cleft palate. One of the technicians at the clinic took him home to do the rigorous tube-feeding required to nurse a pup with a cleft palate and he blossomed into a less-small, bean-shaped Frenchie with the derp-iest face I've ever seen on a canine and eyes that pointed in two visibly different directions.

He always had this "crazy-eyes" face that my dog gets when he's about to do something that he knows is blatantly against the rules. He looked like he was continually saying "Hit me, bro!" He didn't bark, either - he had a velociraptor-like shriek that sometimes sounded uncannily like the scream of a hysterical human woman.


The Showdown
I was standing in the main office filing paperwork. Robespierre was hanging out in the practice manager's office with a baby gate blocking the door while the technician taking care of him was at work. There were at least two pee pads laid out on the floor for him to use.

Which was, of course, wishful thinking, because the moment the manager stepped away he squatted in the center of the office and took a dump on one of the very few patches of floor that was not a pee pad. See left for a detailed but not-specific-enough-for-anyone-to-recognize-it-because-I'm-paranoid-that-I'll-get-in-trouble-even-though-I-haven't-said-anything-bad-about-the-hospital-and-I-don't-work-there-anymore map of the manager's office.

Gail happened to be passing through the office at that moment, and the sudden inspiration to do dirty work hit her - albeit not for a client's animal, but it was still a triumph. She grabbed a few paper towels and stepped over the baby gate into the office.

As soon as she moved towards Robespierre's poop, he starting freaking the hell out. He was squealing and screaming and snapping his crooked little mouth at her and would not let her take his feces.

Gail started "Oh!"-ing, all flustered the way she gets - "Oh! Oh no! Oh dear!" (and so on.)

Neither the receptions nor I thought to help her because we were too busy busting a gut watching Gail get terrorized by a tiny, retarded bulldog intent on literally guarding his poop.

Both parties made a valiant effort, but only one could win. Gail eventually rallied, got the best of Robespierre, and robbed him of his precious creation... although not without getting poo on her finger.



When Robespierre was older, an animal neurologist confirmed that his neurological issues were abnormal and irreparable. This is my homage to that crazy little mo-fo who terrorized poor Gail more and made me laugh harder than any dog ever has.