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