Mishaps Part Two: The Worst Moment In My Adult Life

This is a very difficult post for me. I'll start with the story the vet told me in his effort to make me feel better.

A father and son were playing with their boxer. The dad was gently lobbing a softball at his son, who hit it with a baseball bat to send it flying. The boxer was having the time of his life fetching and retrieving the baseball. You can almost predict what happened: in one awful moment, the ball, bat and the dog's head all came together. The dog's jaw was broken, the father and son just devastated. The vet assured me of two things: first, the dog's jaw was repaired and everything was fine and second, what I'd done to Molly was nothing compared to that accident.

So this is what I did to Molly.

Once we'd discovered that Molly loved chasing sticks, my mornings went like this: I would get out of bed around 6 a.m. and, while Molly and Bruce continued to snooze, I'd get dressed. Then Molly and I would go over to the sports field behind Jarvis Collegiate right next door. Many large trees lined the property and there were always sticks around. I'd find a stick and throw it for Molly for anywhere between a half an hour and an hour, until the dog seemed good and pooped. Then we'd go inside, wake Bruce up and eat our respective breakfasts.

One morning I found a great big long stick - twice as long as Molly. Molly loved chasing big sticks, and looked supremely comical carrying one - carefully balanced - in her mouth.

This stick was very long, so I was taking care to avoid the dog who was prancing around my feet. But, I wasn't careful enough. Halfway through one big underhand swing I felt the stick connect with something and I said a quick prayer that it was not the dog as I looked down.

I had hit the dog. Molly was curled in a fetal position on the ground, not moving. In shock, panicking and full of pain and sorrow, I dropped the stick, picked up the dog and ran back home. I couldn't bring myself to look; it was everything I could do to keep myself composed as I made my way back to our apartment.

Instead of me dealing with how the dog looked, I forced Bruce to. I plunked down on his side of the bed and said, "look at Molly and please tell me I haven't blinded our dog."

Thrilled to have been woken in such a manner, Bruce still dutifully did as asked. His exclamation of dismay when he saw Molly's face destroyed my last shred of composure and I burst into tears. 

There really didn't seem to be much point in spending time explaining to Bruce what happened, though I did try, and it gave me the time I needed to gather myself enough to call the vet and say I needed to bring my dog in right away.

The vet determined that Molly's skull had done just the job it had been designed to do and fully protected her eye from the force of the blow. They assured me no serious damage had been done and prescribed, as a precaution, some antibiotic drops for her eye. And they told me the story, related above, that I found truly not comforting at all.

I took two pictures of Molly to record this sad series of events. One the day of as a reminder to not play with inappropriately large sticks. One a few days later to show how quickly she had healed.

I'll start with the photo of how well she healed, which also features her new favourite toy:

And here's the record of the worst moment in my adult life.

I'm glad to say we never again did anything so distressing to the dog, except for, of course, the day we put her down.

We did do this, though.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Amusement

Before I go into too much more detail about how we inadvertently and hugely regretfully every once in a while did something awful to the dog, I need to explain a bit more about what a challenge it was to keep the dog amused, exercised and happy.

We knew instinctively that if not exercised a lot every day Molly would blow all her unspent energy on something evil. It was our quest and purpose in life to make sure she was not bored.

What made this difficult was Molly was a novelty seeker. There was nothing she loved more than a new toy and nothing failed to obtain her interest more than that same toy when, well, it wasn't the newest thing anymore.

Recalling that we got her late in September and that she was a small dog, the first six months of her life were spent of necessity for the most part indoors.  

We had a long hallway in our condo, and we launched balls, kongs, sock toys and other diversions endlessly down that hall so the dog could tear after it and bring it back to throw again. This was good exercise and it kept her happy. But our dismay was real on the day that inevitably came when we would launch the toy and she would stand stock still looking at us with an "is that all you've got?" look on her face.

And, while she had a thing for pumpkins, we didn't see this as a viable toy of choice.

So it was with some relief that we discovered, when the spring came and we could take her outside again, that Molly loved sticks in all their endless variety so that it never seemed to her as though we threw the same one twice.

This was the perfect solution. And absolutely nothing could go wrong.

Until it did. 

Click here to read more.

Karen

Mishaps Part One: Mange

Molly's breeder explained the life expectancy of a Jack Russell this way:

"If they make it past their first year, they usually last fifteen or more." 

What she meant was that Russells, in the salad days of their impetuous youth, can and do end their lives in sad and silly ways. Like the dog she bred that launched itself out of the window of a moving car to chase a squirrel. Or the one that disappeared down a deep hole in pursuit of something and never came out again. 

So forewarned, we tried as hard as we could to protect Molly from her number one risk factor: herself. 

That left the number two risk factor: us. 

Before Molly had completed her first year, either directly or indirectly through the actions of her two protectors, Molly was infested with mange, poisoned and clobbered with a stick. None of these were intentional of course, but still.

The mange infestation happened like this.

Russells have a very robust constitution. From the time she was eight weeks old, Molly felt solid, strong, sturdy. But, she was a regular little dog in that she needed her various immunizations against dread diseases. After she'd had her second round of shots for kennel cough et cetera, I noticed that a small patch on her left side was losing hair and looked oddly dirty.

It was demodex mange, a non-contageous critter that always lives on dogs, and takes its opportunities as they arise when the dog's immune system is weakened - as it would be say, after a series of shots. 

Dispositionally inclined to be suspicious of western medicine for both dogs and humans, I eschewed for a long time the  truly shocking-sounding treatments proposed by Molly's usual veterinarian. 

I took instead the advice of a naturopath vet I went to go see in East York, and made with my own hands out of ground lamb and other goodies putatively immune-system-boosting food for Molly.

Here's a picture of her licking the spoon.

The alternative approach did not work all that well. Molly grew weary of the home-made food in less than a month and the supplemental "healthy powder" I added to it had sub-optimal effects (more about which later). Plus, the mange didn't budge.

After another negotiation with her vet - whose first offer had been to dip Molly in a vat of toxins for the going rate of about $600 - we experimented with a cheap ($18), long-term (6 weeks) therapy of orally administered micro-doses (3 ml at a time) of a treatment normally used on sheep to treat demodex. It took every last drop of the medicine and every day of the six weeks, but the course of treatment worked. The mange on her side went away. She did carry to her dying day, however, a small patch of the same stuff on the end of her docked tail.

Keeping Molly healthy was not as challenging as keeping her entertained, more about which in the next post. 

Competition

Early on in her life, Molly got very used to lots of attention.

When she was still too small to walk on a leash, I'd carry her around in the crook of my arm. Without fail, upon someone sighting her, there would be this high-pitched "Ooooh, look at the cute little dog!" Then the people making that noise would approach and ask if they could pet her.

Molly came to recognize that sound, and, upon hearing it, would set herself up for some sweet, sweet cuddly interaction with an endless series of admirers. 

However, it is an important life lesson for all of us that we are not the apple of everyone's eye.

Shortly after we got Molly, my mother, who had just lost the last of the three dachshunds she'd had for many years, got another puppy, whom she called Schatzi.  

Schatzi was a miniature dachshund with the then-rare (but now insanely common) dapple coat. She was born the day, September 30, we picked Molly up from the breeders. 

Mom would bring Schatzi with her when she and my sister, travelling in from Trenton, would drop by for lunch before attending a matinee at a downtown Toronto theatre. 

While my mother and sister were out at the show, if the weather was nice, Bruce and I would take the dogs for a walk and run some errands. We'd take turns waiting outside with the dogs while the other went into a shop.

On one cool, pleasant summer's day many years ago, it was my turn to stand outside. Molly and Schatzi were well-behaved on their leashes on the sidewalk next to me, sitting patiently, waiting for things to get interesting again.

Then there was that "ooooh" sound. I looked up and saw a young man smiling at me. "May I say hello to your dog?" he asked. "Sure," I said, assuming he meant Molly. 

He bent right over and picked Schatzi up. He squeezed her softly and kissed her on the side of her head. He explained he was visiting from San Francisco, that he had a dog like Schatzi back at home, hadn't seen her in a couple of weeks and missed her terribly. "She's just like her," he said, and I could feel his fondness for both the dog he missed and the one he held in his hands. 

He gave Schatzi one more hug, thanked me, and put her gently back down on the sidewalk. He acted as if he hadn't even seen Molly.

Molly was every inch the affronted prom queen whose date has just asked to dance with the least popular girl at school. It's hard to think that you'd even need to teach a dog about humility, but Molly got a lesson that day.

Molly and Schatzi Christmas 1995: Puppies, Rivals

Molly's hard lesson in not always being the centre of attention was not the only peril she faced. You can read more about that here.

Molly - T-C-L-D-W-A-G-A

This may be my favourite memory of Molly. 

It was the summer of 1996. Molly wasn't quite full grown, maybe ten months old. We were at Bruce's family's cottage up at Inverhuron, on the shores of Lake Huron just south of the Bruce nuclear power plant.  

There was a bunch of us walking along the narrow dirt road that ran behind the waterfront cottages: Bruce, me, Bruce's cousin and his wife and their two kids. The kids were young, maybe four and eight, fully ambulatory and energetic. We were taking Molly for a walk and one of us had a yellow NERF ball. 

We stopped in a small ball field by the lane that went down to the water. We took Molly off her leash and started playing keep-away.

The day was warm and partly overcast. The grass on the field was soft, green and dotted with tiny yellow flowers. We flipped the ball between us as Molly jumped, ran, and snapped at the ball, trying hard as only a terrier can to grab it in midair.

But she was a small dog, and even warm-hearted humans can be treacherous, so we threw the NERF ball just a bit higher than she could jump.

But then one of the kids flubbed the throw! Molly got the ball! She had it in her mouth (the ball was almost the size of her head) and she darted in and out of the feet of the slow-moving, inagile humans. 

Molly bobbed and weaved like a basketball star. She braked, zipped back, spun and ducked. Six humans trying as hard as they could failed to get the ball away from her. At one point I made a dive to grab her, did a two-point face plant, skinned my knee, and came up empty-handed.  

Finally, Molly ran to a spot about ten feet away from the clutch of defeated humans, holding the ball in her mouth, panting around it.

I looked around. We'd drawn a crowd. People walking on the lane and - I recall this very clearly - two guys sitting in the cab of a truck parked by the ball field, were watching us, laughing.

Molly also felt the gaze of adulation (more about which in the next post), lost her concentration and didn't see Bruce's cousin come up from behind her and snatch the ball out of her mouth.

Our dominance re-established, we put the dog back on her leash and carried on our way.

Recalling an earlier post, we imagined that Molly's secret name was The Fetcher. Molly, however, from that day in the ball park on, knew that her secret name was Molly: The Clever Little Dog Who Always Gets Away.

But even super terriers have formidable rivals, which you can read about here.

The Fetcher

We got used, over the weeks and months, to most of Molly's super powers. And I suppose she got used to ours.

For example, she learned, pretty darn quickly, that when the black, inedible thing on the end table made a loud noise, and we tore its head off and spoke at it and put its head back on, very shortly after that another big dog would arrive at the door of our den, and then it was party time.

She also learned that we would leave our den, walk a short distance, and wait for the door to another, smaller den, to open. Sometimes, when the door opened, that den had other big dogs in it and then it was party time. Sometimes the den had another dog in it. When that happened, depending on the dog already in the den, the door would either close and we would wait for it to open again, or we would step into the den, knowing the other dog would never do anything as reckless and unwarranted as challenge Molly.

After we entered the small den, the next time the door opened, the outside would have completely changed. Then we would take her to a place where she could pee and poo and we wouldn't yell at her.

Molly also learned that every once in a while we would climb into a den on wheels, sit in it for anywhere from one to five hours, and emerge in a very different place.

All of this must have seemed magical indeed.

None of it compares of course to Molly's special power, which was, I think, to sense, locate and retrieve any missing tennis ball in a 400 kilometre radius.  

We first discovered this power when Molly was very young. Maybe nine weeks old. I had her out for a walk, at night, and, as we passed some bushes planted along the side of one of the buildings across the way from where we lived, she pulled so intently against the lead, I let her have her head. She plunged under the nearest bush and came back out almost immediately with a tennis ball in her mouth. There it is in the photo below.

Again, we underestimated this capacity the first time we encountered it. But after a while it was impossible to ignore. Bruce took Molly to visit one day at his office. He put her down, took off her leash, and - zip - she was gone. Minutes later, she was back, with a tennis ball. One of Bruce's co-workers had lost it under her desk about three years before.

Another time, we had driven about four hours to visit friends at their cottage south of Algonquin Park. We'd been there two years before with Molly. We opened the car door, Molly flew out, ran down the steps to the cottage, disappeared inside and emerged, seconds later, with a tennis ball. It had been under the couch.

Along with the power to jump four times her own height and run at sub-sonic speeds, Molly was "The Fetcher" - the special operations terrier who could - so long as their evil schemes involved tennis balls - foil even the most desperate global criminals.

All of this, of course, is just our silly anthropomorphism of our little dog. Molly had her own notions of what her powers were, revealed in her secret name: "Molly, the Clever Little Dog Who Always Gets Away," about which you can read here.





  

Living With A Cartoon

In the 1988 movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit the animated characters were called "Toons." This was a nickname, and not a nice one, for "Cartoons."

The Toons in the movie possessed astonishing capacities, as do all characters unconstrained by the laws of physics, the limits of anatomy, or the force of gravity. They could whip black circles out from inside their clothing, which they would then step into and disappear. They could jump several miles in the air. They could contort themselves around corners and bug their eyes out a full metre from their faces.

But the Toons were children in their judgement and behaviour. Their motives were not as great as their abilities. They were naive, feckless, unfocussed, irresponsible and impulsive.

They were in every way then very like a Jack Russell Terrier puppy.

And living with Molly for the first six months (or maybe six years) was like living with a Toon.

When she wasn't asleep, she was a gravity-defying, perpetual motion machine. She liked to jump on people the most, and, being a small dog, she generally got away with it.

She may have thought she was serving some purpose or other.

And when she was just too much to deal with, we found a way to keep her under control. We would pick her up and hoist her in the air with one arm. This worked. She would remain perfectly still for as long as your arm strength lasted.

This method was available to us until she passed the ten pound mark.  Then we had to try something else.

Click here for more tips and tricks on how to manage a super hero in your own home.