The Accident I FAILED to Watch Out For

 

Now that our children are grown, our fur-babies are the family members who live with my husband and me. Mac is the grumpy old man of the bunch, a black, thirteen-year old Cairn terrier/Schipperke cross who takes his job as Watchdog seriously. Mac raised Petey from a tiny furball into his sweet, smart and funny twelve-pound Shih-Tzu sidekick. Neko is their feline brother-from-another-species. He alternates between playmate and doggy nemesis.

 Because Petey’s hair grows constantly, he has to visit Miss Dana every other month for a bath, haircut and nail trim. Mac goes with him for a bath and nail trim. Neko spends many hours every day taking care of his own grooming needs, thank goodness!

 Bath Day is very exciting for the pups. They love visiting Miss Dana. Her home is in the country only a five-minute drive from ours. Her Grooming Salon is in what was originally her garage.

 The short drive to Miss Dana’s in January was uneventful. I dropped the pups off at three-thirty in the afternoon and went home to vacuum while they were away. Mac HATES the vacuum with a passion. A few hours later Miss Dana texted they would be done at six o’clock. We drove over to pick them up in the rain.

 Chuck parked in the driveway to the side of the house. I used my phone’s flashlight to light our way around to the back where the salon door was located. The boys were happy to see us and ready to go home. After paying and chatting with Dana, we put on their harnesses and leashes and carried them back to the car.

Chuck loaded Mac in the driver’s side back door. I loaded Petey in on the passenger side. I made sure to toss in the end of his leash before shutting the door.

We climbed into the front seats and headed for the grocery store in Molalla to pick up some eggs and milk. A few minutes later as we came into town, Chuck had to swerve to avoid hitting a guy on a bicycle. The bike had no lights or reflectors, and the guy was dressed in dark clothes. Although Chuck was driving the speed limit, he slowed down because visibility was so bad.

 Out of nowhere, three things happened at once: the car seemed to hit a pothole, a sound like metal snapping made me jump, and screams filled the air.

“What happened? Did we hit someone?” Chuck yelled over the screams.

“I don’t know! I don’t think so!” I craned my neck to look into the back seat where the screams seemed to be coming from. “We hit a bump or something. I think one of the dogs got hurt.” Although I’d never imagined a dog could scream like that.

“I need to pull over!” Chuck sounded as shaky as I felt.

He turned into a parking lot at the end of the block and stopped the car. I opened my door and jumped out as he twisted around and peered behind my seat.

“It’s Petey!” he said. “He’s upside down between the seat and the door. Be careful opening the door! He may fall out.”

I was so scared he’d get hurt if I couldn’t keep him from falling, but I had to get him out. I crouched down and eased the door open a little. As soon as he had a little wiggle room, Petey twisted over and managed to get a paw hold on the edge of the floor and pull himself up. Blessed silence fell like a comforting blanket.

I opened the door the rest of the way and looked Petey over in the dim light from the dome. No obvious injuries, but he was shivering. So was I. We were both in shock.

“There’s no bleeding,” I told Chuck. “He’s standing and moving.”

 “Good. Why don’t you let me have a look at him while you check Mac?”

 “His leash is missing and his harness is coming off,” I said. “I’m going to hand him to you.”

 Very carefully, I picked him up and handed him to Chuck. Mac came to me, wagging his tail. I checked him over, but he seemed fine. No shivering.

 “Petey seems okay,” Chuck said. “We need to drive around the block. I’m still worried we hit someone on a bike.”

I moved up to the front seat and took Petey onto my lap. His shivering seemed to have slowed. We drove around the block twice, but saw no one. I remembered I’d found Petey’s steel leash clip still attached to his harness and told Chuck about it.

“I think his leash fell out the door and I didn’t see it in the dark. It must have caught on something and jerked him so hard as it pulled through the door crack that it flipped him onto his back and wedged him in. Luckily, the leash clip couldn’t get through the crack so the leash broke off. And his harness distributed the force over the strongest part of his body before it broke.”

“When I slowed down,” Chuck said, “his leash got caught on the rear tire and wrapped around until the clip couldn’t get through the crack. That was the dip we felt and the metallic snap. Thank God we weren’t going faster when it happened!”

Petey was a very lucky dog. He was sore and bruised, had a swollen ear and a broken blood vessel in his eye, but suffered no major injuries.

What I watch out for now is dog leashes in the dark.