A scare in the night and a smug morning
Yes, falling over dead.
I think of her as Piper the Four Minutes Dead - or Lazarus Dog. She's obviously the patron saint of crumb snatching.
The first incident was a few years back. She came in after going potty and fell down dead in the kitchen. No heartbeat. No breath. Limp. Very dead. I yelled to Better Half and then began assessing her airway for CPR. I suspected that she had kibble lodged in her throat. She's so damn small that even my pinky was too big to clear it. Regardless, I fought to free up her airway, and began earnest effort to bring her back from the dead.
My mother was beside herself, begging me to let her pray over the dog. Prayers are good but I'm not pausing resuscitation for them. It took a great amount of effort over the span of four minutes before she revived. She was wobbly and confused but definitely breathing on her own. No broken ribs from the chest compressions, either.
Whew!
Last night, she began to thrash around under the blanket. Poor Better Half thought he had squished her (he didn't). Her drunken wobbling was almost spot on for vestibular ataxia. Her heart and lungs sounded normal, though her pulse was a bit more lively than usual. Pupil reactions were good, though she had slight horizontal eye movement to the left. Likewise, her off-balance wobble caused her to fall towards the left when walking. But she had no problems climbing upward to lick a face while being held, all four feet reacted to being pinched, and her wag stick fluttered madly as though to comfort us.
"I'm hokay. I'm jus' a liddle drun, honesh. Hee hee."
I didn't sleep, either, but that's because the fucking dialog in Stargate is ten times softer than the fucking explosions and gunfire. My sleep state was a cross between a blorft snooze and Armageddon. I was thisclose to tilting into choleric marsupial mode.
But I digress. Piper is doing fine now. We'll call the vet on Monday so he can take a look at her ears.
That brings us to this morning. We're completely out of dog food. Hershey and I piled into the car and drove towards Steubenville. We didn't very far before he began pawing my arm and moaning. Potty emergency!
I flew down the exit. There wasn't any traffic so I skipped the full stop and took the left turn at a good clip. Hershey was pacing the seat at this point. Another quick left got us into the gas station parking lot. I pulled into the area near the air pump, came to a sudden stop, and Hershey hurled himself from the car the moment my door opened. He hauled me towards the grass and pee'd a river. And pee'd. And pee'd. Someone started chuckling and I turned round to find a LEO sitting in his cruiser.
Lovely. I'm about to get a mess of tickets.
Officer Chuckles leaned his head out of his window. I offered a weak smile as Hershey continued to pee.
"Potty emergency," I nodded my head.
"Guess so," the officer confirmed, and then drove away without giving me any tickets or warnings or even a slight reprimand.
We got back in the car. I turned to make sure Hershey wasn't lying on his leash.
His smug face gave me the giggles.
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| Yo. We just broke the law. |
