Oh What A Night!

Never, NEVER have I had a pickle like this to sort out at 1:30 in the morning and even now I am amazed that my sweet Fable found a way to stop my heart. Cold. In its tracks. Mid-pump. Arteries seized completely.

Dear sweet Fable (racing name Bohemian Fable but don't let the word 'racing' fool you) came up to Nova Scotia on a puppy haul last week and Rusty met her on Saturday for the first time. No, I hadn't planned on getting another greyhound so soon. No, I wasn't prepared for her arrival. No, I don't feel confident that I can manage two big dogs way out here in the middle of nowhere all by myself. So of course she came home with us that night. And of course she cried all night because whatever had worked to settle in Rusty ten months ago (has it been that long already?) wasn't going to work with her. Clearly I had to find another way, a better way, to get through night number two.

Martha suggested that perhaps she wanted to be with Rusty in my bedroom and not all alone on the main floor so I decided that's what I'd try. Of course, she doesn't do stairs and I don't lift 70-pound dogs but we'll leave THAT part out and get to the real story. Once upstairs she paced and she paced and I kept repositioning her cushion until she was (sort of) satisfied and since she likes to be close to me, I set her up beside my bed. That way I could reach down and reassure her if she became disoriented in the night. I wish that was all that had happened.

My bed is a queen-sized one on a metal frame with castors. I chose that type of frame because it's easier for me to pull it out to dust behind. Well, at about 1:15 I was awakened from a sound sleep by the sound of something that sounded like a race of sorts, except that it was coming from under my bed. I swear, with the scrambling and scratching that was going on you'd have thought there was a caged animal trying to escape. I turned the bedside lamp on and looked down at Fable's pillow to see what could be happening but she wasn't there. In fact, all I could see on the floor was her tail. The rest of the dog had somehow disappeared under the bed, and in the process she managed to wedge herself in as tightly as she could, slipping in beneath the heavy metal frame. But she couldn't get back out again because her ribs wouldn't compress. She simply couldn't move, she was stuck, and all that scrambling was her spinning like car tires on dry sand but not going anywhere. Even with me using all my strength and ingenuity there was no way I could get her into a position where she could slide out the way she'd (apparently) slid in. And she was scared.

Picture it. 1:30 in the morning, Sunday night, not a person around that I could call for help, and Rusty (the CAD!) pretending he couldn't hear us. Can you imagine? So what I did with my poor sore arthritic fingers is I took apart my bed, dragging off the top mattress (and those double thick ones weigh a TON!) and the box spring so I could finally lift the frame so Fable could get out. And the little worm - as I was trying to put the bed back together again so that I could at least pretend to be going back to sleep she just walked over to where I'd moved her cushion and laid down on it as if getting wedged under the metal frame of a queen-sized bed was something she did all the time, like a midnight snack or a post-bedtime treat. I swear, I could see it in her eyes, "When is that woman going to settle down so I can finally get some sleep?"
Sent from Brenda in Canada