Remember what I said the other day? "It is a truth universally acknowledged..."
It is very true.
Currently I have my leg propped up with ice on my shin.
And I don't want to say that I ran over Jett with the four-wheeler, so I'll say that Jett ran into the front wheel of the four-wheeler while the four-wheeler was moving and it went over top of him.
Sounds much better, right?
We have a lot of cacti in our field and Scout never fails to get something lodged in his paw everytime I take them for a run. His reaction is always the same: stop, drop, and wait for human-mother-person to come pick him up and fix the problem. So I stop the four-wheeler when we are way down at the edge of the property line, I run to Scout and pick him up, I carry him back to the four-wheeler. I try to get the cactus out of his paw but it looks like I'm going to need gloves and tweezers. I could only get part of it out. So I hold him on my lap and we start off back to the house. Jett, meanwhile, is darting around and stopping and starting and going left and right and left again. Scout is squirming and I'm trying to prevent him from hurting himself and me. Cactus is really annoying.
And then Jett darts out from somewhere behind me and boom. I don't really want to talk about it because I think this is going to give me nightmares for a very long time. But he squealed once and ran about 20 feet away. I don't even know where I hit him, honestly, because it was that quick. He had a bit of a limp in his back leg for about 10 seconds and then he just sat there and looked at me as I threw Scout onto the ground, scooped Jett up, and started toward the house. I threw both dogs (gently) into the cab of the truck, and went into the house to call the vet. They were closed. The answering machine said to call a particular emergency vet. I did. The woman who answered said they were a walk-in clinic and she was very nice. I google-mapped the directions and we left.
I contemplated calling Scott. We'd just finished Skyping before I'd taken the dogs outside. I knew I needed to tell him what had happened just in case something was wrong. I didn't want to spring that on him afterward. However, I knew Scott was probably asleep by now and he had a full day of sight-seeing ahead of him. He'd been given a rare day off and I didn't want to ruin that for him. (We can talk about the unfairness of the situation later.)
And then I realized I had no one else to call and got all depressed. I could've called my parents but what could they do? For that matter, what could Scott do even if I did call him and wake him up? This was on me and I hated that not only did I not have someone to give their opinion, I didn't have anyone to help me. It's an awful feeling.
45 minutes later, I pulled into Powers Pet Emergency and Specialty after fighting through the rush hour traffic. Jett seemed fine. Like, perfectly fine. Like, just happy to be going for a car ride. If you ask me, Scout was the annoyed one because he had to wait in the truck while I took Jett into the clinic.
I was fearful of internal damage because, like I said, I have no idea where he actually got hit. The vet couldn't find anything wrong with him. Nothing broken, no yelps of pain. The only thing he reacted to was the thermometer and after that he wanted nothing to do with vet-lady.
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Awfully smiley for being at the emergency vet
My instructions were to have him rest and not use stairs or jump up on furniture. If he started showing signs that something might be wrong, I was to take him back for x-rays or follow up with the regular vet. He was running around the exam room and sniffing everything and pulling on his leash in the lobby. They probably thought I was insane for bringing him because he seemed perfectly fine, but he got hit with a four-wheeler for goodness sake. I almost felt like they didn't believe me. Either that or they were ready to send him off to puppy-protective-services.
Keeping Jett still is easier said than done. He hasn't been acting like he's hurt. He still wants to run and jump and do whatever. The vet told me to take him on a leash when he goes outside. Yeah, right. I mean, for the first couple of days, I carried him up and down the stairs to the fenced-in area and he'd just take off! I mean, if he was in pain, he wouldn't be doing that, right? I can't force him to stay still, can I?
Anyway, I finally got home at about 9pm on Friday night. The dogs were upset because they'd missed dinner, and I had to sit down with my computer and a glass of wine and type out a nice long email to Scott. Then I got to sit up half the night and make sure Jett stayed alive (my own doing, those weren't instructions).
Oh, so back to the beginning of this post. Why do I have ice on my shin? I definitely tripped on the porch steps when I ran in to get the truck keys on Friday night. Pretty sure I cracked my tibia (my over-dramatic diagnosis). It's ironic that this story is about Jett getting hurt, yet he seems perfectly fine and I'm the one icing my leg. He's the one with the prescription for pain pills though.
One month of deployment down...
*This happened last Friday. He seems to be better now, and maybe we'll try running again this weekend. He does not like walking on a leash while Scout gets to chase rabbits.*
**Also, dog-love is very close to my heart these days because I rushed my dog to the ER for pets and was prepared to pay whatever it took. This is probably why I got so riled up over that thing I wrote about yesterday.*