Charlie's Tentacles

Charlie is at the vet right now to get (according to Cade) his tentacles removed. I know, I posted about this way back in June and were just now getting it taken care of. We didn't take him in the end of June because of our vacation. He was going to have to spend a couple of weeks with Jim and Sharon so we didn't want to traumatize him too much. Then once we got back from vacation we had to replace my windshield, then Jay had his week long teachers meetings, then we had VBS, then it was time for school to start, then it was football season, etc. You get the picture - tentacle removal was put on the back burner. Now that we have Sadie, who is a female, it was time to get Charlie to the vet. Especially since it's been cold and we've had them in the garage together. Occasionally I'll hear Sadie barking her head off. It's like she'd giving him a piece of her mind for doing something she didn't appreciate. I'm not sure what's going on between the two of them so we didn't want to take any chances. Also, since Charlie's been running loose more often, I've lived in fear of finding a batch of short legged puppies on my front step one morning. If any of our neighbors had puppies that had legs 1/4 of an inch long, they'd know exactly what house to bring them to.

So yesterday Jay and Cade delivered Charlie to the vet. The procedure will actually be done today, but we had to drop him off yesterday. Since we still didn't have school today Jay and Cade brought me to work and will go with me to my doctor's appointment this afternoon. Of course loading Charlie up in the middle of the day and dropping him off at the vet created quite the opportunity for questions yesterday. Luckily Jay was the one who got to take care of them. I'm afraid since they spend so much time in a vehicle together he may have to field a lot of these questions. Thankfully by the time I got home last night Cade had already moved on to other things.

The first question of course was what were they doing to Charlie?
Then came why are we doing that to Charlie?
Jay's response was so that he couldn't have puppies.
That's what got the wheels turning. If it had been Sadie, Cade would have gotten it. Obviously he knows that women are involved with how babies are born, but he didn't know there was a male connection to it.
That brought up the next question "So how does that work?"
I know of some parents, who at this point would have brought out that special book they purchased and had hidden for this moment. Other parents would draw graphs and diagrams to explain how it worked.

Of course that's not how we handled it. Yes, we are the parents who prefer to avoid those types of conversations with our 6 year old. Anytime anything like that gets brought up I have an overwhelming desire to flee the room. Poor Jay was stuck in the truck with Cade so there was nowhere to run. So Jay answered it like any scared parent would.....you'll understand it later.

It seemed to work, Cade accepted his answer. Jay managed to keep the truck on the road. All was right in the Shepherd household again. I guess Charlie may think differently though......