Yesterday, the backs of my feet started cracking. This happens to me from time to time, mostly when I don’t take care of them and I wear my flip flops a lot. It hurts, quite a bit. No fun.
Also yesterday, our “Check Engine” light popped on for the Honda. We checked the manual, which quite dramatically warned us that the car can feel just fine, but if that Check Engine light is on, you can be doing irreparable damage to your car by continuing to drive it. Strike Two.
But the real doozy struck us at night. We were huddled into a single tent together–Matt, Goose, and myself. Up until last night Matt and I actually set up our own tents for some room, but anticipating a cold night, we thought the body heat would allow for a better night’s sleep. Let me set the scene. The laptop is on my chest, showing a damn good episode of The Wire. Matt is next to me, totally engaged. Goose is snoring, his head resting on my chest.
Goose then gets up, and starts to shuffle around a bit. We assume it’s no big deal, and sort of gently direct him down to sleep at our feet. No problem.
Until, about 10 minutes later, we hear a noise. By my description, it sounded like a cartoon sound effect, kind of like the sound produced when a character falls from a building and splats on the floor. According to Matt, it was a squirty puff of air. If I was to try and write out the sound, as in actually type it out, I’d be using a lot of “s’s” “p’s” “w’s,” and probably some invented letters.
Instantly, the sound turned into a smell, and we realized what had happened. Goose had diarrhea. In our tent. In the corner. On Matt’s sleeping bag. We went from quiet, cozy laziness to full panic mode. Our head lamps popped on immediately. We threw Goose outside to finish his business, and assessed the damage. It actually wasn’t too bad. Very contained, and shouldn’t be tough to clean up. The next 45 minutes were pretty frenzied, with a lot of loudly whispered orders and suggestions, but basically consisted of the following:
-Goose dropping his guts for another 5 minutes, before being put in the car while we cleaned
-Me working on tent duty, cleaning up all the stuff inside with paper towels and the baby wipes we use to clean Goose’s nose fold,
-Matt re-starting the fire, so we could burn the paper towels, now covered in gooey Goose poop, and to let the smoke wipe out the smell.
After all that, I set up my tent. I figured Goose might have more through the night, and so we returned to our original sleeping arrangement. I was solo with Goose, cuddled so closely that any move he made would wake me up. And he did. He popped up at 2, and again at 4:30, and I took him out to continue to evacuate his bowels, akin to how I imagine a tsunami evacuation would be: sheer and utter pandemonium.
Matt says he got a good night’s sleep, and thank God for that because I felt awful. We ended up getting up around 7:30, with Goose having yet another episode. I, of course, was in panic mode all morning.
However, when it rains it pours, but all three of these storms have been alleviated. First off, we called a local vet and were advised to give Augustus Immodium. We did, and he is demonstrating all the symptoms of a healthy dog: he ate, he’s peeing, drinking water, etc etc. He went again later this morning, and his stool is getting harder. Whew.
We took the car to the mechanic, and the long of the short is that our engine isn’t used to having such little oxygen to burn the fuel, and freaked out a bit. He thinks we should be totally fine, after a very thorough 45 minutes with him.
And the silver lining to the cloud of being woken up so many times in the night is that it allowed me to re-apply Neosporin to the cracks on my feet. And as such, my cracks are doing much better.
Crises averted.
We missed a skating connection in Crested Butte yesterday, but are headed to Durango for some skating. I should have two movies up soon. One is a nature scenery of Colorado, as it’s beautiful. Another is an upcoming Skater Profile. Keep your eyes peeled….
