UPS Men & the Dogs Who Love Them Too Much

This one has a happy ending, more or less:

So Thursday Robin, the dogs and I are walking back to the van from the beach.

(If Sam Waterston were interrogating me, I could draw him a nice forensic diagram: there's this path, see, that wanders in from the cul du sac out to the ocean, hideous condos on one side, snowy plover breeding grounds on the other. It's a beautiful beach where by custom if not by law, dogs are allowed to run free.

(On the street side, the cul du sac empties on to Del Monte boulevard, the major thoroughfare connecting Old Monterey with New Monterey. Omnia Monterey est divisa in partes duos per praesieo.)

I didn't have Milo on a leash.

Big mistake.

Milo spots a UPS truck chugging down Del Monte. Now the UPS drivers around here all carry dog biscuits in their trucks, and Milo considers each and every one of them his close personal friend. So Milo takes off after the UPS truck at thirty miles an hour, ignoring my screams: "Milo, come. Come." That dog can really run. (Could really run…)

You know what comes next.

All the cars slow to near halt. Monterey is a very animal-friendly place. Then one guy in a truck decides, fuck this; and as I was told later by the five irate citizens who copied down his license to give to me, purposefully runs right into Milo.

I didn't actually see this, as I was having to restrain Robin from running out into the traffic after him.

All I hear is this thud and then this piteous yelping sound.

Milo comes galloping back to the van. He is obviously very freaked out, and when I bend down to put his leash on him, his tail is thumping but he bites my hand so hard he draws blood.

"Milo! Milo!" screams Robin. He's crying. He tries to reach down to hug the dog and I have to push him away, "Don't touch him!" I don't want Robin to be bitten too.

Gotta get him to the vet which means gotta get him into the van.

If he dies I'm never getting another dog again! I think furiously. Of course I blame myself. But I also blame Ben who was in charge of Milo's obedience training; I blame UPS for not strictly enforcing a No Bikkie policy; I blame the driver who hit Milo.

Fielding the half a dozen or so Good Samaritans who come running up to me with that license plate number took ten minutes or so. Milo had no obvious external injuries but his respirations were up over a hundred, I figured he must have a pneumothorax from a broken rib. I was looking around for a Bic pen in case I had to jettison the ink cartridge and turn it into an impromptu chest tube. Would I even have time to get him to the vet before he stopped breathing?

Also Robin was wailing hysterically: "Is he gonna die? Is he gonna die?"

"I hope not," I said. You must be very, very careful about making promises to a twelve year old boy if, strictly speaking, you're not the one in charge of keeping them.

Long story short – one IV, two liters of Lactated Ringers, six sets of x-rays, one Fentenyl patch and twelve hundred dollars (ulp!) later…

Well.

I think he'll be fine.

Left side of his pelvis fractured in three places according to the x-rays including one very ugly actual break which is a bit worrisome because of its proximity to the intestines. One broken rib. Some tamponade after the original injury, and this was most concerning because fond though I am of Milo, I was definitely not going to spring for open-heart surgery.

But the tamponade resolved itself. (Fun fact: they usually do in an otherwise healthy animal, even when that animal is human…)

Believe it or not, there are actually veterinarians who specialize in orthopedic surgery – for five thousand bucks, they could make it so that Milo could dance the lead in Swan Lake!

I decided to pass on this.

It will take about eight weeks for the pelvis to heal. After the first night when Ben and I carried him on a makeshift stretcher every two hours into the front yard, he's been able to make it down the stairs on his own volition. He's starting to put weight on that leg which I don't want him to do. Mostly he skips around the house on three legs, gracefully enough.

I suspect he will do heal very well on his own, with some ROM loss on that left side but less than the vet predicted.