TheBanyanTree: a real life adventure involving dogs

[Teague, Julie Anna]

A good friend of mine who blogs daily issued a blog challenge for August to write on "Action and Adventure".  Rather bad timing for me in that the first half of my year, and especially July, was chock-a-block full of travel and adventures, and in August I really wanted to stay home, piddle around the house, work in the garden, go to the farmer's market.  I craved a little domesticity.  So spending time with the dogs is pretty much all I've done so far in August, outside of the daily job, which is cranking up in preparation for the 48K university students about to descend upon us.  Fortunately, there is never a dull moment with mygoofy canines.  I have one single, tiny, four and a half pound Yorkie named Tansy, but I often keep Perkins, my mom's rescued, half-priced, slightly emotionally damaged Parti Yorkie. My mom can't resist a half price sale. (A Parti Yorkie is basically a white Yorkie with strange fluffy, knotty hair.) I brought Perkins home with me last weekend. My folks would come on Sunday, spend the night, and take Perkins home with them Monday morning.  Most of the week was fine (no, really, it was FINE) except for Tansy's nearly-choking-to-death incident with the leashes. (I'm realizing I'm several story sharings behind in this venue.) So, the choking incident and then Perkins was almost attacked by a mother deer because he kept approaching and barking and she was protecting her baby.  Mother deer was moving aggressively towards him, ready to kick some ass as I yanked him in the other direction.  Even though I live in town in Bloomington, a few blocks from the city center, we have many, many deer in the neighborhood, most of them having produced fawns this Spring. We'd all lived through those adventures, but then there was Sunday.

Sunday morning at 6:15 to be exact.  There I was lying in bed with the two dogs, trying desperately for a few more minutes of sleep.  Husband was in Florida where he loves to go but I do not.  I'm sure he was experiencing some really good sleep, though, which made me a little jealous. Perkins looked out the bedroom window at that wee hour and saw a large rabbit in the back yard.  He leapt off the bed and ran to the door.  I let him out, because he probably had to pee anyway, and he was never going to catch the rabbit.  I'd recently blocked a rabbit hole under the fence with a rock to keep rabbits out (not effective), so the rabbit ran to that spot to escape, hit the rock instead, bounced off, and ran across the yard the other way, with Perkins in hot pursuit.

Well, something snapped in Perkins' acorn-sized Yorkie brain.  He'd seen rabbits before when we were out on the leash, but he'd never gotten very close.  It's as if he finally got the scent, and he went insane.  He hunted and barked and howled and ran under all the plants in my gardens for 45 minutes, getting mud-covered in the process.  I finally got hold of him to try to calm him down, and I gave him a sink bath to clean him up.  But he was still insane, scratching at the doors and windows, whining and barking to be let back out. An hour of that passed and I was about to pull my hair out, so I let him out again.  The rabbit was long gone, but  he repeated the insanity for maybe another half an hour, until I once again chased him down and repeated the sink bath.  I felt sorry for the neighbors with all the barking, and Perkins has a particularly shrill bark. It goes directly to the center of the inner ear like a sharp knife.   This time I took both dogs out for a walk after his bath, thinking he'd get his mind off of the rabbit.  There usually aren't rabbits in the park, so we walked there.  It is normal for Perkins to pee 45 times on every walk.  Not this time.  Not once.  He just ran around the park like a dog possessed, sniffing for rabbits.  I was agog at his powers of concentration, since I'd never seen an inkling of concentrated effort in him before.

I took him home, listened to more shrill barking, piteous whining, and incessant scratching at the doors and windows.  I tried distracting him with treats.  I gave him a time out in the front bedroom where it's quiet and darkish.  I tried holding him.  He was not to be soothed.  He couldn't let it go.  After the third hunt around the yard-yes, I let him out again because I knew he had to pee and poop at some point-and the third sink bath, and the third round of barking and howling at the door, I finally locked him in the front bedroom again for a bit.  He hadn't even stopped for food or water this whole time.  I'm telling you, the dog was off the deep end.  Finally, finally, SIX HOURS after this all began, I got him calm enough to lie on the bed with Tansy and me. Tansy hadn't been able to get her morning nap because of all of this, and she was so tired she could hardly keep her eyes open.  She'd been growling at Perkins from her perch on the sofa while Perkins ran around losing his shit for six hours.  But, we got on the bed, Tansy collapsed and closed her little eyes, and Perkins propped his chin on my leg so that he could still see out the window (even though I'd closed the blinds). As his eyes drooped he let out one last shrill bark, and Tansy's eyes popped back open and locked with mine.  We were completely sympatico.  We were both over this barking maniac.   At last Perkins could fight it no longer and fell asleep for five or ten minutes. This seemed to reboot his pea brain and he was very normal after that.  When I say reboot, it was literally as if I'd unplugged him and plugged him back in. Sheesh.  By the time Perkins' people came for him, I was pretty much a basket case.

And this, in a nutshell, was Sunday.


Julie Anna Teague