Here's the set-up: I've developed this annoying habit of exercising indoors ever since I discovered I was developing smoker lungs by running outside. All of the pain of the weekend warrior, none of the insouciant stage business and 1940's glamour of the smoker-- the cost-benefit equation wasn't working out. So I started going to gym instead, which, sadly put my running partner out of a job and into a funk. Since Pants is out of town for another three weeks and a day, I'm her only stimulus once she's done chasing the cat, so last night I felt I owed Abby a late evening walk.
This is when I discovered that in an endorphin haze from my earlier gym trip, I'd left the headlights on in our rickety old blue pick-up, Babe the Blue Ox. Babe coughed hesitantly to life, but I decided I needed to drive around a bit and recharge her battery. Rather than disappoint Abby, I figured I'd combine tasks and drive her around town and then to her favorite park where we'd throw the frisbee a while and call it a night, Babe charged up, Abby and I charged down.
Abby's experience with riding in pick-ups has been limited to those with campers and those with sufficiently crappy upholstery to let her ride shotgun. She has never tasted the delicious open air, and initially it seemed the potent elixir of night air and exhaust was just what she needed. She skittered from rail to rail, hanging her head over the side and panting in a wide, maniacal smile. Then she figured out she could prop herself up on the wheel wells and lean ever so slightly into the wind, and this was ecstasy. Soon she was making a circuit of the truck bed and squeezing all four feet onto the wheel well and then--oh, then!-- she figured out she could stand with her hind feet on the wheel well and put her front feet on the rails and ride like a majestic ship's prow, chest out-thrust and taking in the wind in great, greedy gulps!
By this point I am frantically hammering on the back window and shouting "Uh-uh! Bad! Bad dog! Get down!" with my windows rolled down so she can hear me, and people at red lights are looking at me and laughing. When I am truly frantic, my accent veers sharply Texan, and it must have confirmed a whole slew of stereotypes to see a wild-haired sweaty girl in a beat-up pick-up yelling "Dammit dog, you git down!" Did I mention Babe is a standard with a tricky third gear? So I also managed to kill the engine a couple of times in all of this.
Abby declined to git down, and we were a block from the park, just passing Starbucks' eery evening glow when she decided to take flight. We were going about 25 miles an hour (I was jiggling the stick searching for third gear), and my last frantic glance caught her back feet gripping the upper rail right behind the cab window and pushing off. The fear was sickening. At once, my mind screamed "STOP" and "Don't stop-- you might catch her under the back wheels!" I coasted slowly to the curb and thanked god that we had just left the main road and there was no one behind us.
For a moment, Abby failed to appear. I called her twice, three times-- there are no street lights on this stretch-- and finally she came trotting over from the other side of the road, head low. I scooped her up onto the passenger's seat of the truck and examined her under the dome light. She was bleeding from several places and shaking, and a piercing odor of poop came from her-- the fall had scared the shit out of her. She licked my face and hands and I could see blood on them, but not where it was coming from.
I drove her slowly back home and tried my most soothing voice, saying over and over, "It's OK, Sweetie, it's OK" and this did a little to convince me that it could be. At home, I had her walk back and forth a little in front of the house and noticed a little limp but good mobility overall so we moved onto the kitchen floor where I got out alcohol and cotton balls and took inventory of about six cuts-- three on her front paw, one on her back ankle, one on her back hip, and one larger one, more like a road rash, covering one side of her nose and going down to the tip of her chin. I dabbed carefully at everything and most of the bleeding stopped and then I checked her teeth for chips or damage-- they seemed all right. Abby's an Australian Shepherd mix, and her coat is blue merle, which is a lovely mottled mix of white, black, grey, and few caramel patches, but this made distinguishing between natural darkness and swatches of road grime difficult.
Sitting there in the cold kitchen light with her bright pink and red cuts, her road-grimed fur, her pink bandanna all scuffed up and askew, and her eyes wide and ears flattened, she looked more pitiful than I've ever seen her. She needed tenderness. She needed her dignity recovered. She also needed a more thorough assessment of possible swelling or fractures, so we headed for the bathroom and I ran her a shallow, warm bath. I rinsed her cuts again and massaged her fur and shampooed out the grit, and for the first time, she quit being Super Action Dog and laid down in the tub and let herself be soothed.
Once the bath was over and she was all puffy and damp, I gave her a rawhide bone and she seemed much restored, even insisting in her usual throaty whine that we go outside and toss the ball around a little. This morning she was a little stiff, but her cuts looked all right and she was tending to them with thoughtful licks.
This made me think about bike accidents I had as a kid, and how even though everything felt awful and I was rattled and sore, having my mom go through the ritual of hydrogen peroxide and Neosporin and band-aids was so soothing and important and for a time afterwards, it was like we shared this special thing, this awareness of my vulnerability and her ability to tend to it. Abby and I have been having trouble lately with her pooping in the living room when I'm gone at work all day, even though this hasn't ever been a problem before, and until she threw herself out of a moving vehicle last night, most of our interactions had been of the "Godammit, bad dog!" variety. But then she was hurt, and it could have been so much worse, and making her better and being thankful for her safety occupied my whole world.
It's sad, I guess, that it takes a near miss to snap me out of my occupations with missing Pants and running the household to really notice how much I depend on Abby, and how lost I'd be if anything happened to her. But in another way it's helped me to remember that she needs a little extra effort on my part, a little extra companionship to make up for the guy she's missing too. Also, a few more trips to the park-- walking-- would help, so that the idea of it isn't so maddeningly rare that she'll jump out of a truck for it.
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