I cut my hair short on the weekend — short enough that you can see the two large scars on the left and right front sides of my head. They aren’t of the frankenstein variety but they are fairly large. I’ve always been a bit self conscious about these but have decided to accept them and learn to love them. There might even be those that ask, “Stevey — how would you get scars like that and survive to tell about them ?”

When I was young we spent a lot of time at my grandmothers farm in Gray Valley, QC just south of St. Jovite. My grandmother is an amazing woman who has been fiercely independent for her entire life – she has lived on a large farm up in remote country with roads that are almost impassable in the winter and rough/long/rutted/washed-out in the summer time. She’s always had a large number of beloved pets surrounding her. Chief among these have always been her dogs – Great Danes. She’s had 3 that I know of. These dogs are large by whichever “huge dog height standards chart” you want to use. (family photo around 1974)

Seems when I was between 2 and 3, we were visiting her on a summer weekend. I decided that playing under the huge old wood kitchen table would be a fine idea. So happens the dogs food bowl was also under there. Before anyone knew what happened the dog (4 to 5 times my size at this point) had snapped at me, more specifically the top of my head, as I had probably used his food bowl as a toy. From what my dad has told me – the blood was amazing. I was rushed to the hospital (30 minutes away on crappy roads) while I turned a shade of blue. Had it been winter I might not be here today.

The great dane survived only by the love of the family. Thankfully I was too young to remember the incident, but have great memories of the dogs. To save the dog from being the unfair “villain”, I normally just tell people, “It’s where they removed the horns.“.

Thanks to Geoff for the head shot photo.