Hot Dog

Here’s another story from the Nashville to Colorado move. Since I dropped a teaser in the last entry  I thought that I would go ahead and share it.  It actually all began during the Chicago to Nashville move.  On Move In day we under estimated the effect of the Tennessee heat and humidity on our manly bull dog. With all of the doors open and the movers bringing everything into the house I had the girls outside with Rufus so he wouldn’t trip anyone. He is amazing at that. My plan went south very quickly. The extreme panting began, his tongue turned purple he lost the ability to walk and was vomiting. No! This is not happening.  Was our beloved weird dog going to die on our first day in our new town? Welcome home!! We moved him into the laundry room where he could stretch out on the cool tile.  I put ice cubes in his ears, on his gums and all over his back. The movers were knocking on the door. “Maam , where do you want this table”. Just put it in the basement was the answer to every question. You can imagine how that ended. Yes. Full basement. Finally, after about 45 minutes he’s breathing slowed, his eyes brightened and we saw him coming back. It was over. He was going to live. After that we were so careful not to let it happen again.  So when Move Out day came on a hot summer day 2 years later I put him in daycare while the movers were loading the truck. At about noon the phone rang and Rufus had overheated. What? How? It’s in his notes. He can’t be outside in this weather. So as my husband went to close on the house in CO I raced to meet the pet day care manager at the Emergency Pet Hospital. I ran in the door and straight up to the receptionist asking if Rufus was there yet. She just frowned and pointed at the floor. There he was foaming at the mouth, flat on the floor barely breathing. They whisked him away into the back rooms where I was not allowed. The woman who brought him in sheepishly looked and me and said he was only outside playing with the other dogs for about 20 minutes. I just looked at her with a bewildered gaze. An active 20 minutes outside for a short snout breed in TN summer heat is a very bad idea.  Time crawled on and eventually the vet came out and told me that they had sedated him and put him on a breathing tube trying to get his body temperature down.  I will skip all of the details and move on to the next day  (as this is a long story already) when we picked him up as we drove out of town for our two day move to Colorado. The vet rolled him out on a gurney and put him in the front seat of my little car. He was a sad sack of sand just lying there. This was it; as positive as I am about just about everything, my little buddy was going do die on the road with my sweet girls as witnesses. They said just keep him out the heat and don’t let him get stressed. Well, how hard could that be? We made it through the first day in 104 heat, making bathing room stops along the way as he staggered like a drunk man to the closest tree, barely able to lift his leg. We rolled into a pet friendly hotel at about 10 pm thinking we could rest and recharge. First day down just one to go before 5 days in a hotel.  Small mission accomplished. My husband went to check out the rooms and check us in.  The only two rooms available were on the second floor  and the AC had not been turned on yet so I needed to wait in the comfortable car with the patient while they cooled down to a reasonable temperature. Meanwhile, in the lobby, my teenage daughters were getting  dating advice from a half dressed woman with a  baby on her hip whom resided at that very hotel. Well, she didn’t have the baby on her hip the entire time because she left him alone in her room upstairs while she did laundry. I so badly wanted to help her but this was not in the cards that night.  When the rooms were bearable my husband came out with a rolling luggage rack to transport the sad sack of sand inside. I laughed for the first time all day. Rufus was so foggy that he kept dripping off the thing as we pushed it towards the door. Then, and I am not kidding, the hotel did not have an elevator. My husband carried the sad sack of sand all the way up to the room. That’s love. If not for the dog then for me. Now, hot and cold are definitely relative terms in my  book but the rooms were still hot.  The furry beast panted on the floor for half the night where I joined him succumbing to the inevitable knowledge that some sort of parasite was in my not to distant future. The next day of travel was a longer version of the first but with a happy ending. Rufus survived and was soon back to his weird self and I thankfully did not get the creepy crawlies.  Rufus is now thriving in the cool dry mountain air.