“I’ll find a vet,” I said, and I started simultaneously Googling for emergency vet services and telling Eric what happened. I wrote down a number incorrectly, wasted time retracing my steps, and finally reached a vet who talked me through what to do. There was a clinic five minutes away that opened in twenty.
“Is he in shock?” I asked as I pulled clothes onto my husband.
Eric held Petey tight against his chest. “I don’t know. We just need to get him to a vet as fast as we can,” Eric said.
We sprinted through the house with both teenagers and Clark’s girlfriend Alayah, who had arrived during the pandemonium, on our heels.
I spoke through shaking lips, through my tears. “You can bike or walk to school. I’ll get you an excuse note later. We have to take Petey to the hospital.”
Three stricken faces nodded. Susanne dissolved into sobs and put her head on the kitchen bar. There was no time to comfort her.
Eric sat in the passenger seat with Petey and I immediately took a wrong turn out of the driveway.
Relax. Pull it together. Don’t make this worse for Petey.
“Damn Cowboy. Stupid, stupid Cowboy,” I said.
“If he had wanted to hurt him, Petey would be dead. He didn’t mean to hurt him,” Eric said.
I pictured our giant yellow dog on his belly, whining, crawling toward me before I had even found Petey. Cowboy. Our big yellow lab, our pet whom we loved.
“I know. I know. I know. I just hate him right now. I can’t help it. He hurt Petey. And I could have stopped it. How did I let Petey out of my sight? Why didn’t I feed Cowboy outside? I let this happen. Oh Petey, oh Petey.” I could hardly drive, but we were almost there.
The clinic wasn’t open yet, but I rang the bell anyway and a kind young man opened the front door. “Our puppy, his eye,” I got out, then Eric was beside me with Petey and showed him to the man.
“His eye and his face, it’s an emergency, it’s bad,” Eric said.
The young man nodded and ushered Eric straight back to the surgical suite as he yelled for a vet. I tried to fill out the forms but I couldn’t remember the date or our zip code. Less than ten minutes later, Eric was sitting beside me and five people were clustered over Petey, taking care of him. Eric put his arms around me and I pressed my wet face into his shoulder and let my sobs bounce us in a oddly calming rhythm.
We started a dialogue by text with the kids, who had decided to wait for us and worry about truancy later. Susanne was terrified we would give Cowboy away.
Eric and I looked deep into each other’s eyes, and he shook his head no.
“No. He is family,” Eric typed.
Before long, the vet came with an update, then invited us back to be with our little buddy, who was under anesthesia.
“I consulted an ophthalmologist. This is the worst swelling I’ve ever seen. The eye was intact, but the optic nerve was damaged. It’s not uncommon for breeds with flat faces and protruding eyes to have an eye pop out. Sometimes they keep their sight, sometimes not. But Petey has only about a one- to two-percent chance of seeing out of this eye. He may not even keep it. But we’ll do everything we can to make both things possible, and even if we have to remove the eye later, it won’t affect his quality of life. We’ve managed to get the eye back in the socket, but just barely. Thank goodness you were able to come quickly or we wouldn’t have been able to. We’ve sewed it shut. His stitches will stay in for four weeks, then come out one stitch a week. You have your work cut out for you.” She put her hand on Petey’s side for a moment, looking at him. She explained the complicated regimen of creams, pills, and ice packs. We stroked Petey’s warm body. I cried some more and a vet tech held a box of Kleenex out to me.
“Your main challenge is that in twenty-four hours, he’ll want to resume normal puppyhood, and you need to keep him still enough that he doesn’t pop the eye back out. Keep him away from the excitement of the big dogs as much as you can.”
The big dogs. Cowboy. We had already explained how it happened. I didn’t know how to reconcile Petey’s eye with my love for Cowboy or my personal guilt, and frankly, I wasn’t ready to do either one yet.
As if she could read my mind, she went on. “Petey acted like a terrier puppy. Cowboy acted like a normal dog. This kind of thing happens. They’ll probably be best friends someday.” She gestured toward Petey. “Don’t be too hard on your big dog. There are no lacerations to his face or eye. It could have just popped out from a blow, like from the big dog’s head, or from furniture or the wall. I’ve seen bug-eyed dogs like him run into walls and ruin their eyes more than once. They have no structural protection.”
Images flashed through my mind in a crazy high-speed slide show. Cowboy crawling toward me on his belly. Petey’s swagger as he sidled up to Cowboy and sat on his leg the night before. Petey leaping up to lick Cowboy’s mouth. Petey’s dangling eye and bloody face.
They brought Petey out of his anesthesia and he immediately sat bolt upright, looking loopy but ready for a fight. He got a round of laughs.
“What a tough little guy!” one of his helpers exclaimed. Yes, he was.
Four hours later, I brought Petey home. It was stressful, emotional, and very busy, and I confess, I cried for a good part of the first twenty-four hours. We had a few high-risk moments, like when Petey got excited and leaped into the air in a sideways twist and body-slammed himself bad-eye-side first into the floor. He fell into our backyard pond, completely immersing the eye I was supposed to keep dry in dirty water. He managed to sneak a back-footed scratch of his eyelid when I wasn’t looking and drew blood. He beat his eye against the floor playing with Stinky Bunny. He bumped into furniture on his blind side. Over and over again, I heard his yelp of pain.
But he thrived. He ate like a champ, he tolerated his eye meds, and he gave kisses just as freely as before. He dashed around like his cranked-up jackrabbit self. He discovered that he likes the T-bones I tried to bribe him with even more than he likes Boston Market chicken. Being an injured dog had its privileges. He even got to sleep in our bed so I could keep him from scratching.
Above: Teeny-tiny ice pack.
And the biggest thing? The thing that made heart swell like a water balloon in my chest? Cowboy. Yes, Cowboy.
Cowboy was banished to the backyard for a full twenty-four hours post-incident. I couldn’t even look at him. It took Eric three full days to speak to him. Susanne pleaded with us to forgive him, but just the thought of him threw me right back into the trauma.
When I let Cowboy in the house for the first time after Petey’s injury, I held our little Boston in my arms. Petey with his giant swollen eye. Petey who would likely never see again from his left eye, and who would never look the same.
Above: Thirty-six hours later, with a T-bone.
Cowboy walked straight up to Petey and me, sniffed Petey and licked his face. He nudged Petey’s belly with his giant muzzle. Petey was in ecstasy. His body wriggled in my arms. He strained and stretched to lick Cowboy back. Then Cowboy put his bony dinosaur head into my hand and stared up into my eyes and wagged his tail slowly. He talked to me, he cried to me in his Chewbacca language. Can a dog feel remorse and ask for forgiveness? This one sure seemed to.
Above: Forty-eight hours later, first trip to Nowheresville. Hanging with his big yellow friend.
I put Petey on the ground and he pogoed up to kiss Cowboy. Cowboy hung around for some Petey love for a moment, then ambled off to lie down in his favorite spot.
Someday they will be best friends. Petey will be fine. If their hearts were big enough to love past that horrible, traumatic incident—that tragedy—then mine was, too. Puppy love. We’ve got it bad.
I ♥ Petey, the slightly-less-beautiful-than-before dog. I love him even more than I did when he had two big black eyes that shone with mischief. In fact, I love him twice as much with one eye as I did with two.
And I love the big yellow dog; I have since he was our silly puppy. I always will.
~
~~
Chapter Forty-one: A Waking Dream
Excerpt from the novel Conceding Grace25:
A hand touched my shoulder, then pushed it. “Katie? Katie, wake up. It’s me,” Nick said.
I fought waking, but my eyes opened after he had shaken me a few more times. “What time is it?” I asked.
“It’s three a.m. I know it’s late, but I need to tell you something.”
“Where have you been?” I asked.
“Don’t you remember, silly? I went shopping for presents to make you smile.”
“Oh, yeah. You told me that.”
My eyes closed. His hand shook my shoulder again.
“Katie, wake up, listen to me, because I can only talk for a moment. I need you to know I am all right. Don’t stop looking for me. Take the picture with you. I’m counting on you.”
“Wait! What? Nick?” I jumped up, the cotton sheets sliding to the floor as my feet hit it. “Nick?”
Nick was not there. Of course he wasn’t. You’re dreaming, I thought as I climbed back into bed, tears falling. It was just a dream.
Crash. I jumped. Annalise’s agitation sparked in the air around me, and I realized she had hurled something to the ground. I got out of bed again, and this time I flipped on the light switch. The sound had come from Nick’s closet. I opened the door.
His tackle box sat upright on the floor, five feet down from its shelf above Nick’s hanging clothes rack. What do you mean, Annalise? A tackle box?
I squatted down beside it and placed both my hands on its lid. I closed my eyes. “I’m all right. Don’t stop looking for me. Take the picture with you. I am counting on you.” Nick’s voice filled not just my head but my whole body.
I opened the box and pulled out each item, one by one. Hooks, leaders, and rubbery squid. Odds and ends I couldn’t name. And a picture. A water-damaged picture of Nick and his father on a fishing boat. The Little Mona Lisa. “What is this? Annalise, Nick? What am I supposed to get from this? Annalise? Help me, please help me.” Stillness. Complete quiet.
After several long minutes sitting on the floor in front of Nick’s closet waiting for an answer or an idea, I gave up. I tucked the picture into my travel bag, and returned to bed. I slept the last hour and a half, but not well, Nick’s voice and Annalise’s antics in my head.
By five a.m., Kurt and I had grabbed the coffee cups Ruth held out for us, and I had pointed the nose of the Silverado toward the airport. We sipped our coffee in silence as we drove to catch our flight.
Nick, I’m coming to find you.
25 We goin’ back to de islans, mon.
~~~
Chapter Forty-two: Pupdate
Despite the full-time job that is nursing a Boston terrier puppy through a devastating eye injury, my world kept revolving on its axis. I was thankful, though, that the client I’d had scheduled for the next week called to reschedule. God granted me time to keep an ice pack on Petey’s eye during his naps. But not much time.
Clark qualified for the state tournament in cross-examination debate, Susanne swam two swim meets (and won the 500 free in one of them) and sang in her first choir concert, Liz celebrated fall break with the season’s first snow and a bear on campus, and Thomas visited us (yay!). Only Marie required no special attention, which earned her favorite-child status for the week.
I got a rejection letter from an agent after a nearly five-month-long review of one of my novels. Since this happened on the afternoon of the day Petey hurt his eye, it didn’t impact me as much as past rejections have. Instead, it fueled my conviction that traditional publishing is on its way out. I am embracing the new era. And icing Petey’s eye.
Above: “I fought the pig, and the pig won.”
About one week after Petey’s injury, we took Petey, Layla, Cowboy, and JuJu to the vet all at the same time. Those four, plus Eric, Clark, Susanne, and me, all in the Suburban. It was quite a show. They’re building an addition onto the clinic and naming it in our honor.
~~~
Chapter Forty-three: Gatorama
I don’t know what you call it where you live, but the lifestyle we call redneckin’ is alive and well under many names in this fine country. In south central Colorado, for instance, we found it at the Colorado Gators Farm. So, duh, the gator farm became the total highlight of our trip.
We came to be in the vicinity of said gator farm while visiting our daughter Liz, whose college is nearby. In other words, the gator farm is so awesome that whole towns and universities have sprung up around it. It’s like the cultural spoke in the wheel of SoCo.
It didn’t start that way. Originally, the gator farm was a tilapia farm perched (get it?) atop a natural hot spring. While fancy fish can survive in cold and even frozen water, it turns out they like eighty-seven degrees way better. This little nugget of information raised my respect for fish intelligence tenfold.
The first gators at the farm were nothing more than green garbage disposals: they ate the dead fishies. Dead fishies stink, and aren’t good for much else than feeding gators. The founders of the gator-Dispose-All concept were so forward-thinking in their greenness, in fact, that they didn’t even buy the gators. They recycled the cast-off gators that no one else wanted. So if you ever wondered where those cute little caiman gators at the local pet shop ended up, I’ll tell you: they’re freezing their asses off eating dead tilapia in SoCo.
When we visited, it was a balmy nine degrees outside, and the gators were “resting.” Even water bubbling up at eighty-seven degrees from down below gets a bit nip when it’s that cold outside. This makes the gators very, very sleepy. Did you know a gator can survive while frozen? It can. Not for all that long, but the record at the gator farm is forty days after a good freeze for a gator to emerge, thaw, and resume somewhat normal brain function, which wasn’t all that much to begin with.
I don’t want to suggest that working at the gator farm is high-risk, but we did see three different memorial posters to employees who had died prematurely, cause of death unknown. Two brave gator wranglers remained when we were there. I think the stress of their jobs may have gotten to them a little. About all they wanted to talk about was duck rape26. If you haven’t yet had the opportunity to explore the social crisis that is the rape of defenseless female ducks, I highly recommend a tour of the Colorado Gators Farm.
There was way more to see than just gators (and hydroponic farming and tilapia tanks) at the gator farm. For instance, we saw a biodome. It reminded me of Mad Max and the Thunderdome, except smellier. A whole lot smellier. We also enjoyed the rescued tortoises, snakes, geckos, frogs, possum, parrots, emu, goats, horses, donkeys, sheep, ostrich, and cats. Cats as in plural. Cats as in prolific breeders. Apparently the gators’ diet does not include much cat. There were a lot of goats, too, and I’m pretty sure one of the donkeys was knocked up. It is possible that ducks aren’t the only things getting raped at the gator farm.
No redneck story is complete without potty humor, so I want to tell you about Monster, the generously-proportioned tortoise/toilet paper roll holder. When Monster was rescued, he weighed three times what he should have, because his former owner lovingly hand-fed him meat for years. Monster hangs out by the potty so often that the handlers keep a roll of toilet paper on his back. When unsuspecting guests reach for the roll and it rises up under their hand, they run screaming and half-decent from the bathroom. Hilarious to the gator-wranglers, but not necessarily to the guests themselves.
I don’t want any of this to scare you out of a visit to the Colorado Gators Farm, because it is totally worth the price of admission, if for nothing else than a chance to see Morris, the resident movie star, whose many film credits include Happy Gilmore and Doctor Doolittle 2. We didn’t actually see Morris, as he has a special private gator enclosure appropriate for a star of his caliber, but we did have the chance to. He’s (supposedly) right next to the pile of frozen gators that didn’t make it past forty days, and just down the path from the bone yard of gators past, who shal
l rest in peace until someone requests a gator skeleton. And then, if the price is right, the wranglers will exhume the body, hose it off, and ship it UPS wherever you would like.
We loved the gator farm and made it out intact with certificates of bravery in hand for holding Albuquerque the sleepy caiman alligator, who even signed our certificates with a full imprint of his teeth. The wranglers encouraged us to come back during the summer, when they personally teach gator-wrestling lessons. I know we’ll at least send Susanne, because we’ve had one too many tours through teenage girlhood at our house, and we were going to put her up for sale on eBay, anyway. If she survives the gator wrestling lessons, she’ll have picked up some skills that we hope she will use in her dating years.
We saw We Bought A Zoo the night before our visit, and when we saw For Sale signs everywhere at the gator farm, we started thinking it would be a great idea . . . for some other family.
26 OK, y’all, as a victim of sexual assault myself years ago, I know rape is a serious topic. And that’s exactly why it is odd and thus ultimately funny that they brought it up and talked about it at length with my two teenage daughters present.
~~~
Chapter Forty-four: For Sale, $5.00—One-Eyed Dog Who Pees on Bed
Text from actual (short-lived) ad on Craigslist:
***
For sale, $5 OBO, to a good home: one-eyed dog who pees on the bed. This Boston terrier puppy eats his body weight daily and later expels roughly 1.7 times that on the master bed and in high-traffic areas. He is prone to bumping into walls, bicycle stands, furniture, etc. He is excellent at finding all the tchochkes you have lost under the couch. Loves to chew and prefers things that smell like humans. A specialist at whipping the rest of the animals into a frenzied mob. A gatherer and a hoarder, he steals anything he can grip with his mouth. Oh, and he only has one working eye, but it’s real pretty. His vet bills come with him. Act fast, this one won’t last long at this price.
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