Last month Stuart had his annual physical, and he gave me “the bad eye” when we pull into the parking lot at The Southside Animal Hospital. Dr. Michael Jones said Stuart didn’t have anything to worry about. According to Stuart, the best part of any doctor visit is getting back into the car and driving away.
Dr. Jones called several days later and informed me that Stuart had a kidney infection. Stuart was prescribed some capsules, of which he was to take three of them three times a day for 10 days.
I have endured a 10-day challenge. I had to stay on top of my plan to hide Stuart’s medicine in his dog food. After just a few times I noticed that he was figuring out which clump of food the pill was in. My thought was that he could smell the scent of my fingers on the clump of food I had squeezed the pill into. I started touching each clump in the bowl, and that worked for a few days ... before I had to come up with a couple of more ideas.
Stuart was pleased to discover that spring break was over and we were once again visiting Central Elementary and South Grove Intermediate in Beech Grove. He is a canine that loves routine and has trouble dealing with the two-week breaks in the fall, winter and spring.
We missed several weeks at South Grove due to ISTEP testing, which was held a few weeks before spring break. It was great to visit both schools and listen to students read to us again.
During our morning visit to Central Elementary, one of the students who came to read to Stuart brought a great book. It was about Hurricane Katrina, one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States. We looked at some of the pictures, which showed Katrina’s destructive path through cities like New Orleans.
As we were enjoying the book, I suddenly heard a siren going off inside the building. Principal Craig Buckler came over the public address system and explained that a tornado drill was underway.
A school staff member came to our room and escorted us to the hallway, where hunkered down until the drill was over.
We were soon back in our room and once again listening to great stories.
Later, I was thinking about our morning visit to Central Elementary and started wondering about the odds of a student picking a book about hurricanes, reading it to us and having something like a tornado drill happening all at the same time.
I was impressed with the calmness of all the students. Stuart and I stayed calm also.
Shonk is a 1960 graduate of Southport High School, a ’63 grad of Indiana Central College (now the University of Indianapolis) and a retired bus driver from Beech Grove Schools.