Yelping

Last night I was walking Fuzzy Britches around the neighborhood when she suddenly fell down onto a pile of leaves. I stopped, confused. She then started yelping at a high pitch which broke my heart and made me want to burst into tears. The pile of leaves were hiding a grate and her paw had gotten stuck in one of the holes.

Fuzzy Britches NEVER yelps in pain. If one of us accidently steps on her tail or paw, she doesn’t say anything. So hearing that sound was one of the worst sounds I had ever heard.

I was able to quickly remove her paw from the grate, but then I didn’t know what to do. I was still a few minutes from home and I didn’t have my cell phone on me. Could she walk home? I’m not sure I could carry her…..she is 70 pounds.

She gingerly held out her paw for me. Poor girl. I couldn’t see anything wrong with it, but then again it was kind of dark. I kept reassuring her that everything was okay.

She put her paw down and started to try to walk on it, but ended up limping instead. I cursed myself for not seeing the damn grate. There was a light on in the house across the street- should I ask to use their phone and call CP to have him pick me and FB up?

Her walk got a little better and I eased up a bit. I was still unsure of what to do, deciding to wait a few minutes to see if we could walk home on our own. In the end, that’s what we ended up doing. As soon as I got in the house I checked her paw to make sure that I didn’t see anything wrong (I didn’t). The rest of the night we watched her to make sure that she wasn’t favoring the paw or not putting any weight on it.

Despite the fact that she won’t walk in puddles (what a princess), FB is one tough dog. Thank goodness she seems to be doing fine. I might leave her home on my runs the rest of this week though….and will probably bring my cell phone on future walks.