ouch

After abandoning her Tug-a-Jug breakfast toy this morning (having consumed half of its contents), Pearl skulked into the kitchen. “What’s wrong, Pearl?” I asked. She held up the left foot, scene of so many sad encounters. I won’t repeat the foolish coo-like thing I did at this point until I caught myself, but I did take hold of her paw, check it for any sore places, put it back down, and eventually shut up. Later in the day—skipping ahead in the story—I was holding her leg and checking it out carefully, having remembered somewhere in the course of the day that the first manifestation of Lucy’s cancer was a limp. (Emotional memory is way ahead of cognitive memory, I’m told, and lots more precise.) Anyway, I think she’s probably pulled a muscle in her. . . hmmm. What is it? Leg, I guess, for want of a more specific word.

Again???? You might ask, not even knowing about the freak-accident slice that tore her leg open when she, speeding around the yard, made contact with a tiny edge of sharp rock and might have bled to death if Patrick hadn’t seen her do it and promptly applied pressure to the wound, holding on tight all the way to the pet ER. I should say that he was aided in his perception by Pearl herself who, he reported, stopped dead, looked up with an “Uh oh” expression, and immediately ran to him.

Pearl seems a bit hapless to me, though Patrick insists that it’s her athleticism that keeps getting her into trouble. His perspective comes from years of playing baseball and from spending a part of every vacation when he was a kid in the emergency room (something that would have led me to leave him at home, frankly). Nonetheless, we are fencing the other part of the yard to provide a less obstacle-ridden terrain for frisbee and ball playing. And now, of course, we’re letting her rest her leg by not tempting her into any games.

Pearl hobbled is a very nervous dog. When she’s not completely able, or, as Patrick says, at 110%, she clearly feels incredibly vulnerable, the frail, unsteady wildebeest being stalked by the predator. She spends every available moment under the bed and reacts spookily to almost anything I pick up, move, or carry. She reminds me a little of me in January 09, when an injury to my knee made me feel out of sync with my environment--so much so that I felt a little menaced by life in general, afraid to go out if I couldn’t move quickly and nimbly, if I couldn’t cross streets at a clip. It was a terrible month, after which I recommitted to a light box because I’d clearly fallen into that peculiar depression that comes with unstructured time (long semester break) and the steady retreat of light.

Some dogs seem to get depressed by an injury only if it lasts a long time, and some dogs, I suppose, might be capable of ignoring pain so thoroughly that they immediately reinjure themselves. Pearl notices, minds, and, much to our initial surprise, takes a pretty sensible approach to healing. But like everything else she does , she experiences injury in quick-time, reacting instantly with both physical and emotional signs, reorganizing the shape of her world in ways large and small, looking for comfort and safety in a territory that again seems full of danger.