It’s Saturday morning and I am winding up some work that should be done in a few minutes. My face feels weird and after running my hands over it, I realize that I am smiling. This smile is based on the fact that for the first weekend in about 6 weeks, I don’t have to work throughout the entire weekend.
Some work to do? Yes.
Slaving over my keyboard all day and night until Monday? No.
Smile.
And I have plans. When I finish this last little bit, I will work out, and then I will go downtown to buy hotdog buns. Sound crazy? You wouldn’t think so if you’d had these buns? Like golden doughy envelopes of heaven that make you forget you have worked through the last 6 weekends.
The workout begins. It’s the only thing in the way of a joy that can only come from having freedom of not being needed while having hotdogs. As I begin my first squat, an ominous crunching sound comes from somewhere in the room. There are a few kinds of crunching sounds. There’s happy food crunching, which comes from biting into cereal or nutty candby; there’s sad food crunching which suggests the diner is eating carrots or celery. Then there’s an unnatural crunching, which suggests that the thing being crunched into had planned to stay intact for the remainder of its existence. This crunch implies a post-crunch cleanup session.
This is one of those crunches.
A plastic lens from Burke’s eyeglasses has popped out and the dog is doing her best to crack it into several small pieces – aka shards.
My workout shifts from squats and burpees to diving to the ground and wrestling with a Shih tzu while jamming my fingers in her mouth to extract shards of plastic. I get what I can and spread the pieces out on the counter so I can recreate the jigsaw puzzle. It’s mostly accounted for – big pieces and a few shards – but there is certainly a tiny gap or two. The dog is licking her chops like she does after dinner.
A quick search online confirms the danger of having sharp things go through a small dog’s intestines. Two calls to emergency vets get the same reaction: You should bring her in. But an emergency vet on a Saturday, the subtext is: don’t forget your wallet.
Ten minutes later, we’re outside. The dog is running and sniffing and enjoying life. She unloads two poops and though I am fairly certain it couldn’t have been digested and processed yet, I check the poop. You never know; the dog’s like a foot long. Nevertheless, there’s nothing. Nothing but a middle-aged man inspecting poop and explaining it to the dog.
This is naturally when Artem pulls up as my Uber Pet driver. He locks his own door as I get in the back. I get it, for sure. How safe can you be with a pissed-off looking weirdo who talks to poop and is now carrying a little dog into your car. But still, I’m in the car. What good did locking your driver’s side do?
The ride is ten minutes. I spend the time reviewing phrases and vocabulary that I sometimes know, sometimes forget. Poop (verb), throw up, swallow, sharp. The receptionist is alone in the waiting room. I say hello.
‘You’re dog swallowed plastic?’
‘That’s me. Or her.’
I am given a form, which I fill out on a comfortable couch that may have appeared in Star Trek. Looking around, I realize the place has been renovated to unrecognizability. I ‘hmm’ and hand back the form.
Two women come in with a cat in a crate and the mood immediately becomes 21 Grams somber. As they speak to the reception, the receptionist pokes her head around with a few follow ups. Is she on any medicine? No. Does she have a rabies vaccination? Yes. Is she castrated? Yes. (Here, I consider making a joke – me or the dog, but the room is read and I avoid stupidity.)
Emergency hospitals – for humans or animals – are usually not happy places, but full of things trying to be happy. There are stuffed animals and a water bowl with little weird animals on it. But when you go to one, something bad is happening. At best, it’s not as bad as you thought. No, Mr. Smith you’re not having a heart attack. It’s a panic attack. Here’s some Xanax, now go home, eat some ice cream, and watch The Avengers. This is the best-case scenario. From there is just gets worse and worse. Someone is sick, someone needs attention, you’re not out of the woods for a few days. And then of course the worst-case scenario: someone goes to an emergency hospital and they don’t leave.
This is what is going through my head as the cat owners open up the cat crate and begin tearing up. It’s a bad day for someone; one of those days – by the law of numbers – will be bad for me. Right now, my stomach drops for them. The dog is calm but a little confused, just ten minutes ago she was in her bed eating a perfectly delicious pair of glasses. And now, this. What gives?
We get called in. Like the reception area, the furniture is space-aged but comfortable. Like where you’d sit before you were called in to give a report and a list of red-shirted casualties to Captain Kirk. They have remodelled. Subtly, I make sure my wallet is in my pocket.
I explain things to the doctor in Czech the way a child would after several shots of nighttime cold medicine and being spun in circles while wearing a football helmet. The vet inspects the dog, and goes rectal for the temperature. He says everything looks fine. We put together the jigsaw puzzle and he explains our choices. We’ll give her a gel to help protect her intestines and help push anything out and protect her stomach.
He’s cheerful and it seems that this visit to the emergency hospital won’t be too bad for me and mine. I heave out a sigh of relief. But the vet gives me an eye gooey with subtext and I catch it: You will spend your day scouring poop for plastic.
I nod. It’s a small price to pay.
Except the bill. That’s the big price to pay.
OK, so this time it won’t be my bad time. I consider myself and my dog lucky. When we get back to reception, the women and their cat are in with a doctor and my dog decides the receptionist is a long-lost friend. Who knows? Maybe she is; I don’t know how these things work. They play while the doctor sends through his report and the prescription.
We take the metro home. The dog loves the metro and I figured I’d let her enjoy herself. She runs around the park at home. Burke comes down. I give her the overview. Everything’s fine. We have to look through poop to find the rest of your glasses. The dog hops and plays and achieves a level of joy one has after leaving the doctor with an ‘all’s more or less OK’.
I tell her about the bill. She winces. But neither of us cares about that. She suggests lunch.
We salvage the day by enjoying an afternoon of being served beers and fatty foods with fries. I feed the dog half my fries, and a little of my baguette end. I buy her some of these little cheese sticks that she loves and a bag of her treats.
She can have anything. As long as it doesn’t crunch.
