DAY OF REGRET  #2

Five thousand, five hundred, and five days in the country and only three days of regret. (see March 1st entry) All three untoward events involved dogs, and in each case, the dogs survived in fine shape. It’s the humans who have never fully recovered.

Stella is a lovable lunatic, a little red Aussie. Her face peered out at me from an Aussie rescue site and screamed, “Get over to Oklahoma City. Come on, now. Get moving.” Her previous owner said she was a wonderful dog, but “just a little goofy.” When I pressed him to elaborate, he always came back to “just a little goofy.”

And she is goofy. She has one brown eye and one blue eye. Sometimes they appear to work independently. Her little powder puff tail never stops wagging, and it has one 6-inch long tuft that whips around in circles.  Stella doesn’t bark––she roos. She puts her nose in the air and lets out a melodic “rooooo!” whenever she is happy, which is all the time. She is well behaved, affectionate, and a comedian. She backs up to her sister and sits on her. When you enter a room, she rolls onto her back and extends a leg. If you fail to rub her belly, she extends both legs in your direction. We do not rooooooo the day we fetched Stella!

Stella is a diver. She runs at top speed down the hill, onto the dock, and dives into the pond. At first she disappears beneath the water, then surfaces and swims back to shore. Back up the hill, back down the hill, off the dock. Watching Stella, you cannot be crabby. Oh, da joy!

The dogs love to walk in the woods. We were on a wonderful winter stroll, and as usual, they were out front. They ran through the gulley checking for foxes in the cave. And although I have carefully researched the appropriate nutrition for their ages and weights and studied the contents of every brand of dog food, they really prefer to scoop up deer droppings by the mouthful.  In short, it was their best day ever. It is always their best day ever.

As we crossed the levee at the back of our pond, I heard a lot of splashing. The girls were out of sight for the moment but I figured they were running around the soft edges of the frozen pond.

As I reached the middle of the levee, my heart dropped to the ground. Stella was in the middle of the pond and had fallen through the ice. I slid down the bank to the water’s edge, screaming. Her little brown nose was barely above water. She was paddling madly but kept hitting the edge of the hole she had fallen through. She was about 40 feet off shore.

And this is where I had to face myself. Did I have the courage to go in after this dog?  Short answer––no, I did not. The ice was watery and soft near the shore, so Stella must have leaped across that gap onto more solid ice.

I stepped into the water and as my boots filled and my snow pants became soaked, I could barely lift my feet. The bottom of the pond was slippery, and I went to my knees. It was difficult to get up as my coat became saturated and heavy. Stella was still paddling wildly. I was screaming and crying. Why had it never ever occurred to me that this diving diva might go out on the ice? Why did I think a dog would understand the various physical states of water and the limitations of each?

I stood in the pond and tried to make myself lie down and swim but I could not. I fought off horrendous visions of Stella, now in the icy water for ten minutes, succumbing to hypothermia or exhaustion. I saw images of her body  lying under the ice until spring. But what I really saw was myself as a coward, unable to plunge in, my lower limbs already numb.

I ran around the pond to get to the boat on the opposite shore, but I couldn’t feel my feet, and I was unable to breathe. I was tired from running in soaked winter clothes, and I was hysterical, screaming  that I would move, I would leave this place if Stella drowned. I hated this place.

It took another ten minutes to get to the boat on the opposite shore. Stella still struggled with her nose barely visible, splashing loudly. I wasn’t sure if I could push the boat over the ice to her or through the ice if it broke.

The boat had been on the shore covered with snow all winter and as I flipped  it over, a muskrat leapt out and disappeared into the pond. And here I thought I had no more screams left. He had amassed a food supply under the boat, about 2 bushels of dead bullfrogs and fish in various states of disrepair. My shock absorbers were about to surrender.

I pushed the boat to the water’s edge and looked up. Turns out I no longer needed it.

Stella was plowing her way to shore by karate chopping the ice with her front legs as she went. She was as amazing as the ice breakers on Lake Michigan.

After  half an hour of trauma, I was frozen, hysterical, emotionally wasted. Stella, on the other hand, ran joyfully up the hill, butted into her sister, rolled over and wagged her ridiculous tail as she ran circles around me.

She got a hot bubble bath,  got blow-dried, wrapped in a heating pad, and fed hot milk. She was hugged on my lap the rest of the afternoon and evening. For that one and only time, she was allowed to sleep on our bed.

So maybe I wouldn’t leave the place, but I would be mad at it for a long, long time. I had a lot of self-examination to do. Why couldn’t I go in after Stella? Was I a coward? And what if that had been a person––what would I have done?

Stella’s assessment was easier. She crawled out of the blanket, raised her nose and let out a big, happy “Roooooooooo!”

Tomorrow: Day of Regret #3.

DAY OF REGRET  #1

At 8 p.m. on our wedding anniversary, I told my husband we were going to take a little ride to pick up his present. When we crossed the Mississippi River at 9 p.m., he looked puzzled. “It’s in Illinois?”

We pressed on to Rockford, and he looked concerned. “It’s in Rockford?”

At 9:30, I pulled into a dark, deserted truck stop and parked near the back. He locked the car doors. “It’s at a truck stop?”

Soon a car pulled up next to us and turned off its lights. I got out and handed a check to the driver. He opened the back of his car and turned on the overhead light. My husband peered in and did a slow turn in my direction. “So this is my anniversary present, then?”

I’d never even seen a picture of her, so it was a relief that she was sleek and lovely. Ellie was an 8-week-old Australian Shepherd––black, brown, and white.

Turns out my pig-in-a-poke was not only beautiful, she had a peaceful soul. In her 11 years, she was never devilish, demanding, or disappointed. But she had every right to be.

When she had been with us just a week, we had to leave her with a house sitter. My husband was off to New York and I to Florida for a conference. Our usual sitters were unavailable. One of my coworkers volunteered her sister, who “loves dogs and loves being in the country.” I reluctantly agreed because I had no better options.

On my way home from Florida, I was trapped in St. Louis airport for hours as storms squatted on the Midwest and stalled all flights. My husband was stranded out east. I called home to tell the sitter we’d be late. She was inordinately worried about being stuck in the country, snowed in for life, destined to live out her life in Iowa County. I couldn’t seem to comfort her.

It was nearly midnight when we finally took off, and by then there was no answer at home. In my gut, I knew she’d left the dogs alone in a blizzard.

At 1 a.m. I began digging my car out at the Cedar Rapids airport. I was wearing tennis shoes and a light jacket; it had been warm when I left Iowa. I ruined several credit cards scraping ice off the windows. My gut was curdling as I thought about the dogs being home alone for hours.

The 30-mile drive home took over an hour and was haunted by visions of suffering and frozen dogs. At 2 a.m. when I turned onto our gravel road for the last mile-and-a-half of the trip, I hit a white wall. The drifts were 3-4 feet high, the road impassable. I had to leave the car right in the middle of a bridge.

I put plastic grocery bags over my tennis shoes and knotted them around my ankles. As I plunged through drifts, they filled with snow, and ice water trickled down inside my socks. It was nearly impossible to lift my feet high enough to clear the drifts. And those bags were like ice skates, so I fell repeatedly. I walked that mile and a half in a little over an hour with snow blowing me backwards and blinding me. I was sobbing by now, frightened and guilty about my poor dogs. Invisible cows on either side of the road snorted, and that served as a crude GPS to keep me between the fences.

By the time I reached our mailbox, I was wet, shivering, and disoriented. I figured the snow plow–a huge maintainer––would crush my buried car sometime during the night. I was nauseated thinking of this beautiful, trusting puppy, so recently torn from her mother, locked in her kennel. The power along our road was obviously out; no lights dotted the countryside. How long had she and her sister been in the dark house without heat? 6 hours? 8? Did they have water? I had some big plans for the woman who abandoned them.

When I finally got home and threw open the front door, my guilt was not relieved. The puppy was in a cage full of everything she had released to express her terror. The air in our home was reeking. Ellie was huddled in the back corner of her kennel, covered in her own filth, shaking all over, and crying uncontrollably. So was I.

I gave her a warm bath and wrapped her in a heating pad and blanket. And I held her the rest of the night, promising her this would never happen again, apologizing for my negligence.

Three times in 15 years I have regretted moving to the country. That’s not bad, considering the litany of bizarre and difficult situations I could recite. Had we lived in town, a neighbor could have walked to our house and taken care of Ellie. Out here, there was no one to call, and no one from town could have reached our home.

We worried that Ellie would be ruined, skittish, and maybe never attach to us. But she never brought it up again. Instead she offered up instant forgiveness followed by eleven years of trusting, appreciative companionship.

Tomorrow: Day of Regret #2

CSI,* YORK TOWNSHIP

40 years ago D.B. Cooper hijacked a 727 airliner, extorted a $200,000 ransom, and parachuted into the great Northwest. Extensive FBI and amateur searches have found no trace of him. I’m thinking a trace might be a pretty optimistic chunk considering the altitude where D.B. deplaned. The FBI searched Washington and Oregon, and while it’s preferable to be in Washington or Oregon, there’s a fair chance he populates the soil on both sides of the border. The case remains unsolved.

The disappearance of D.B. Cooper is a major FBI unsolved crime, but they wouldn't have any better luck figuring out the everyday goings-on at Gron-acres. It’s these niggling little mysteries that eventually drive you crazy.

Bart and Homer live about a mile down the road. I’m not sure how these mutts found us because our house is down a thousand-foot lane and out of sight from the road. But here they came, trotting toward my 3 dogs. I figured I was about to see something that would make Michael Vick shudder in anticipation, but I was wrong. Those 5 dogs––Bart, Homer, and my dogs––Obe, Ellie, and Norah––did the requisite stern-to-bow meet and greet, and everything was copacetic.

We have wide, mowed walking paths through our property, and Bart and Homer joined us on our morning stroll. They came back every few days, and all 5 pooches had a great time.

I became a little concerned about my dogs catching something from these otherwise nice visitors because there were no rabies tags on their collars and they had more ticks than Big Ben. I am not a wuss––these engorged ticks were the size of green grapes. Additionally, some chunks of Bart's fur weren’t as tightly attached as others. So, I decided we’d better end the visits. I loaded them in the truck and delivered them to their own yard.

I have no idea how those two got back to my house before I did, but that wasn’t the strangest thing. Our front gate has a latch on the outside , and you must lift it straight up by hand, not by paw. Yet, the gate was open, my dogs had split, and Homer and Bart were lying on my front porch. I schlepped them home again. 

     Obe                         Norah                          Ellie 
The right dogs on the right porch at the right time

When I got home, my 3 were sitting there with that “What’s yer problem?” look that dogs get after they’ve broken a rule.

Homer and Bart came back a couple of times a week, unlatched the lock, opened the gate, released my dogs, and then took up residence on our porch. When our girls did return, usually they were wearing sand-burr body suits, head to tail. My worst worry was that they wouldn't return at all. 

I called the dogs’ owner and explained the problem. She said she’d take care of it, and she did.

The question is how? When I drive past their house, I see Homer and Bart running around free as birds, yet they never come back to our place. No one would mistake them for obedience class valedictorians, so I doubt a simple discussion did the trick.

And now I feel guilty. Who says dogs don’t have feelings? 

I kind of miss them.

* Curiously Strange Incidents

More about ticks:

http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/faculty/rbkimsey/tickbio.html

More about dogs navigational systems:

http://www.petplace.com/dogs/homing-behavior-in-dogs-and-cats/page1.aspx

To read a pitiful FBI account about failure to find D.B. Cooper:

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2007/december/dbcooper_123107