I tested our first aid supplies, phone list, land-line telephone, backup telephone, radio network and found all of them wanting.
Many details to attend to and some significant repairs in planning/function.
A dog guest and Scooter were having a gay old time when she somehow impaled herself on a steel post I had tried to remove some time ago… but didn’t persevere as I rather obviously should have.
She set to screaming in obvious injured and confused pain trapped with this rod entering her gut and nearly exiting her back. Nobody but me could get close (she trusts me more than anyone on the planet, though she is more devoted to, and adoring of Missy than anyone on Earth).
I lifted her off the stake (gross me out – it had a 4″ cross piece at the top that had to come out of her). I did that part right, that is, the only way I can think it could have been done.
Major flap of bloody, raw, red, torn open side, but no guts spilling and not a lot of blood pouring out. That was DARN LUCKY. Cuz in my state of mind, with our current organization, I could not find a decent patch kit.
I couldn’t get the land line to work for me. Heck, I couldn’t find the vet’s phone number (magnetic card on the fridge) in my Rolodex. Turns out the phones in our area were coincidentally DOWN. I had guessed it was panicked operator error.
I couldn’t call the vet, or Missy on the phone! Okay, now I’m really nonplussed.
Get the @!%^#$% cell phone out of its metal box. I can’t make that work. No love between me and it ever – and certainly not now. (In “airplane mode” at the absolute far end of cell-phone coverage with intermittent if all else was good – all above my pay grade, particularly now).
Screw it all … Get the dog into The Beast. Start the 20-mile boogie to the Vet shop. The CRX woulda been slightly faster, but taken time to get the car cover off. A tradeoff I decided in favor of The Beast … run faster than I usually run it… turns out it is capable, I just never asked.
While I’m rolling, I call a friend who I know monitors the 2-meter radio. Ask him to call Missy’s cell phone. He doesn’t have the number. Oh well, on my own for dealing with the dog, vet and Mom who has appointments in town an hour and a half from now.
The vet shop was good. They hustled me straightaway into an examination room. I got the dog on the table without problems (like I said, she trusts me a lot).
She and I ended up on a thin pad in a concrete and Plexiglas kennel with me getting major butt-sore from working to chase away her terrors for the next hour.
I finally left the dog to the repair shop, boogied back upstream to fetch Mom to her appointments 15 minutes late.
On the way to the vet I had resolved to dig down a bit and CUT the dang post off like I shoulda thought to do before now. The owner of the dog Scooter had been playing with tore the steel post out of the ground with his bare hands while I was gone. He is definitely younger and stronger (than I ever was), but kind enough to suggest my attempts were at the wrong time of the year with frozen or hard-packed ground.
In all, a very unsettling day.
The good news is I did not dissolve into a puddle of panic. Step by step, I did logical things. While my setup was poor, my reactions were okay.
Someday soon, I WILL make some repairs to our EMERGENCY organization. In crisis mode, the luxury of pondering or ruminating is not available.
