Winter and the Future Moon
Saturday gratefuls: Jackie, our hair stylist. Kate’s ability to get into Jackie’s place without the rollator. Ruth’s text yesterday. No more bandages. Pickup at King Sooper. The long nap. Good fitness. Makers of Blizzak snow tires.
Wow. Funday Monday wore me out. That plus the fatigue from the Lupron. And, not getting the fitness boost while waiting for my stitches to come out. This Monday Kate will take them out and I can get back to it. I need the psychic charge from working out. Not to mention that I’m grateful to those workouts for my ability to be in the mix with Kep and Murdoch.
On intervening in dog fights. Conventional wisdom, don’t. If it was a random dog fight, I probably wouldn’t. Unless. It looked like a smaller dog was going to get killed. Then, I might. Haven’t encountered this. I have encountered fights among our dogs many times over the past thirty years.
I’ve intervened in every one of them. Tully, a sweet IW girl otherwise, tried to kill our whippets. Often. Before we figured out a good management plan, I had to pull her off. Vega and Rigel had Gertie between them. I pulled them off of her. Got a small scar. Kep has attacked Gertie a half dozen times. Again, I intervene.
Kep and Murdoch. I intervened. I said why before, so I won’t belabor it. Their situation was different than the others however. Murdoch did not have a collar. On me. I hadn’t put it on. When I grabbed Kep to pull him away from Murdoch, his collar came off over his head.
They were roiling, snarling, tumbling, biting and I had no handles, just what purchase I could get with my hands on their fur. Finally Kep grabbed Murdoch by the lower jaw and hung on. That gave me a chance to get the scarf wrapped around their mouths. Still twisting and bucking. It was hard to keep Kep’s head between my legs. I sat on Murdoch’s head.
I got up, accepting that I couldn’t do anymore; they split, backed off, and I was able to get Murdoch in the house. Until. Snarling, biting again. Upstairs. Oh, Kep had come in through the open back door and Murdoch had found him again. This time I got them apart right away with a full voice bellow, NO!
With Kep back in the sewing room with the door shut and Murdoch up in his room, the incident was over. Kate was out of breath. Adrenaline pushed through me, warding off pain and fatigue.
Slowly an awareness of my arm, not pain, wetness. Removing my shirt, I saw into my left arm. It was a triangular gash that would take 10 stitches to close, 5 inside, 5 out. The wound didn’t bleed much. It would have been a different incident if the ripping tooth had nicked the blood vessel that showed through the subcutaneous fat and skin. Lucky, in that regard.
Darkness had fallen. Urgent care was ahead.
Since then. What was I thinking? I wasn’t thinking. I acted. Later, it was over and I had driven out to Highlands Ranch and back. The dogs remained separated and we got ready for New Year’s Eve. Had to flag off Sandy, our housekeeper, from coming that day because our doggy population was still jumpy. Not a good time for a relative stranger to be in the house.
Was it worth it? Yes. I did what I could, neither dog sustained serious injury. My bite was much, much worse than anything on either of them. Saving them from seriously injuring each other was the point and I succeeded. Can’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t stopped it, but I know one of them would have been mauled. Probably Kep.
Still reverberating all the way into the next decade after it happened.
