I shouldn’t blame Rocky because we ended up in the ER, though it really was the dog’s fault.
Rocky is part Jack Russell Terrier, part whatever.
Five years ago, the shelter manager tried to steer us toward Marley, a cute tail-wagging mutt with a ton of personality.
Rocky, in the next cage, sat still as a statue, staring at the wall. No tail wag, no big “Choose me, choose me!” doggie smile.
“He’s depressed,” the manager said.
He’d been moping since his sister was adopted days before. What’s more appealing than a 7-year old sad-eyed dog who misses his sister?
Shoot the dog
It turned out Rocky had other issues, the biggest being diabetes, which means he needs a shot of insulin twice a day, and I’m the one who “shoots” him.
“This hurts me more than it hurts you,” I say.
He looks at me like, “Yeah. Right.”
I have gotten a lot better at giving the shots, but especially in the beginning, he’d growl and snap, and I’d warn, “don’t make me send you back to the orphanage!”
It’s a routine we do, but neither of us means it.
Or that’s what I assumed.
Me being the needle lady is probably one of the reasons he prefers his master and why I’d sometimes catch him looking at me with a somewhat sinister expression.
Putting a positive spin on this situation, one may leave any social engagement, long meeting, or even jury duty by merely announcing, “I hate to run, but I have to go home and shoot the dog.”
The eyes of have it
In addition to having diabetes, Rocky has become blind, and we are now his “seeing-eye people.” One positive spin is that when we take him for walks, he doesn’t bark at other dogs that he can’t see. And he sticks very close to us. Sometimes too close.
And it was while the three of us were walking at sunset in a Florida state campground this spring that Rocky got his leash tangled around his master’s legs, and down went the master. Hard. Like a tree.
Fortunately, his hands broke his fall. Unfortunately, when he held up his right hand, the index and pinkie fingers pointed straight up, but the other fingers pointed left — radical left.
The sight of those wayward fingers made me weak in the knees, and I nearly keeled over, but I steadied myself and got a grip.
As frightening as it was in the middle of a darkening forest with an injured man and a blind dog, I was our best chance for survival, and I needed to get us to a hospital.
Get a woman to do it!
I went into Mighty Mouse mode: “Here I am to save the day!”
First, we had to unhook our camper van.
That’s not as complicated as it sounds. Unhooking means disconnecting the electrical plug and stowing the line. That’s usually his job, but I could do it faster than he could with his rapidly swelling cattywampus fingers.
I began feeding the thick, 30-foot electric cord into its too-small compartment. I mean, seriously! Who engineers these things?
Typically, he carefully loops and coils when he does it, but I was pushing, shoving, and jamming. He said it wouldn’t fit that way. Wrong!
Using my full post-pandemic body weight to hold the compartment door shut, I locked it, ignoring the fact that it bulged as if the BLOB was about to come oozing out.
“We’re good to go! Now get in and buckle up!” I said, barking orders like Mrs. Captain Kirk, because “I am woman, hear me roar!”
It turns out the roaring wasn’t only from me. I stepped on the gas and put the pedal to the metal, but the van didn’t move. “OMG!” I screamed, “the van’s broke!”
“You’re still in park!” he yelled over the jet-engine like revving.
I wasn’t listening to him because of the noise. And because the Park Ranger standing next to the van was also yelling that I was still in park.
“Oh, good! Thanks!” I said. Easy fix.
Watching my back
Long story short, I drove, he navigated, and we found our way to the hospital. From front-desk registration to medical staff, everyone who saw his hand cringed and winced.
X-rays determined that his twisted fingers were merely dislocated. After a period of yanking and tugging, they were eventually relocated. Happy ending.
Rocky and his master still go for walks, but I don’t join them. That’s because on the way home from the hospital, while the drugged man dozed, the dog sat on his lap, staring in my general direction.
Rocky may be blind, and I’m sure no “dog whisperer,” but I could still read his expression.
“Too bad,” it said, “It was supposed to be you.”
Lesson learned!
I’m much more careful now when I shoot the dog.
