Well, Mulder officially has a criminal record now -- convicted and sentenced to 10-14 days of house arrest.

I blame this entire ordeal, unfair though it may be, on peanut butter. Peanut butter-flavored toothpaste, that is. Mulder, my eight-year-old Labrador retriever, loves to have his teeth brushed. It is one of his favorite things. Actually, what he loves is trying to eat the peanut butter-flavored toothpaste. The moment I pull the toothbrush from the cabinet, his tail wags and he starts drooling. His entire body shakes with excitement.

In reality, the toothpaste is dark green and smells nothing like peanut butter. But, it apparently tastes very, very good.

The fault lies with me. I hadn’t gotten around to buying Mulder a new toothbrush (his was falling apart), and so I was using a new toothbrush that was part of a puppy starter kit I’d received for Gracie, my Greater Swiss Mountain Dog puppy. So that was mistake number one -- using a tiny puppy toothbrush on Mulder, an exuberant, hyperactive 90-pound Lab. Anyway, I was brushing his teeth, and he was chewing on the brush a bit, as he always does, savoring the last traces of gooey, green gunk on the brush.

Then I felt a stinging, sharp pain. I jumped back, stumbling, and Mulder cocked his head, looking very confused -- were we finished already? I looked down and my index finger had a deep puncture wound. The handle on the puppy toothbrush was so short, that my fingers had been very close to his teeth, something neither of us were used to. So, he’d just bitten down on the bristles, not realizing my finger was also there. The wound was bleeding rather heavily, but I figured a little bit of Neosporin and a Band-Aid would suffice.

However, later that night after speaking to my Mom, I decided that I should probably go in to get a tetanus shot, as I knew it had been more than 10 years since my last. Better to be safe than sorry, I figured.

I went to the doctor, he checked the wound, and I got my shot. I was given a form to fill out about the bite, which startled me a bit. I practically wrote an essay explaining that the bite was completely accidental and that Mulder was up-to-date on all shots. I gave the name of his vet, etc. I thought it was a non-issue -- not quite.

When I get home the next day, I was stunned to discover that I had a message from Animal Control asking me when would be a good time to meet about Mulder’s quarantine for biting.

What? A quarantine!

At first I was very upset. I had visions of officers dragging Mulder away and locking him up somewhere. That night, I even had a dream of Mulder and me as outlaws, sneaking across the border to escape.

Obviously, I had no idea about the specifics of regulations on dog bites. I would always have assumed that the bite from a stray dog or a dog exhibiting vicious behavior might be quarantined. But Mulder? Apparently, it didn’t matter that Mulder was up to date on his rabies vaccinations. It didn’t matter that he didn’t mean to bite me. (He didn’t even KNOW he’d bitten me.) Rules are rules.

And so the animal control officer pulled up to our house in the big, ominous truck. There were forms to fill out, and regulations to go over. Mulder was under an official "home quarantine" for 10-14 days.

I felt like such a louse. I’d ratted out my own dog! My family thought it was hilarious. My dad even sent Mulder a prison-stripe doggy T-shirt as a joke. But I wasn’t laughing.

Thus began more than a week of driving home from work mid-day (19 miles one way) to let the dogs out for potty breaks. Because Mulder wasn’t allowed to be in our fenced backyard unattended, the doggy door was locked. Needless to say, it was a long – and expensive – week.

Now that a couple of months have passed, I can finally say "all’s well that ends well". Mulder is, of course, completely fine and was "released" from quarantine after 14 days. Our lives went back to normal, and I went immediately to the pet store to buy the biggest toothbrush in stock!

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