June 14, 2009

• A Bloody Mess

  Yesterday,  in Wasilla with Greyfox, I was going through shelves and bins at a thrift shop, looking for a camera tripod.  Greyfox’s phone rang.  I heard him say, “Oh, shit!”  Then he handed me the phone, saying, “The dog bit Doug in the face.”  Doug’s voice was strained and shaky as he responded to my questions.

  The first thing I asked was, “How bad is it?”  Doug said he had been afraid to look in the mirror.  I can laugh at that now, but at the time I was someplace between irritated and incredulous.  How am I supposed to evaluate his wounds, with only an audio connection, when he hasn’t seen the wounds himself?  I told him to call 911 if he thought he needed emergency care.

  He said that the bleeding had almost stopped.  I asked him if he had cleaned the wounds and he responded that the only thing he could find was alcohol wipes.  His tone of voice (and maybe some telempathy on my part) said that alcohol stings.  I told him there should also be some benzalkonium chloride wipes, and emphasized that he needed to clean the wounds thoroughly, even if it hurt.

  I said that I would leave immediately and hurry right home.  He asked if I’d finished the shopping.  I chuckled and said I hadn’t gotten anything on the grocery list.  I was saving the grocery stop for last, because there would be frozen and perishable items.  Doug told me he could handle the first aid and I should go ahead and finish the shopping.  I did go to the grocery store after I dropped Greyfox at his cabin, but my mind wasn’t focused on what I was doing and I didn’t buy everything I’d intended to.

  At the gas station on the way out of town, I inserted my card backwards in the reader on the pump and was slowed further by having to go inside to the cashier to pay for my fuel.  That worked to my advantage, because I recalled that I needed to buy motor oil.  With my mind on Doug and home, I got back out on the road, but it wasn’t long before my mind came back to the here-and-now.  I kept focused on the road, and made the 50-mile trip safely.  At home, I grabbed up the frozen food, left everything else in the car, and went inside.

  Doug met me at the door.  I gasped at the sight of his face.  The image below is not the gory sight I saw when I walked through that door.  I had cleaned a lot of the blood off his face and beard before he asked, “Are you going to take pictures and blog this?”

  

  After he was cleaned up, and had checked the inside of his mouth and nose, we counted wounds.  There are fifteen in all:  one inside his right nostril, one on the inner surface of his upper lip, and all but one of the rest to the right of the midline of his nose, and on his right cheek.  Koji had been hovering right behind me as I worked on Doug.  Doug said that while he was doing his initial first aid, Koji had come to him and licked him a few times, licking at the blood.

  

  As I finished the cleanup and bandaged his wounds, Doug speculated about what might have happened.  He had been asleep, and presumably Koji was sleeping beside him on the bed, as usual.  The first, most obvious possibility to occur to Doug was that he had rolled over onto Koji and hurt him.  This morning, as we talked it over, Doug said, “Maybe he thought I was a moose.”

  

  It seems a reasonable explanation.  Poor Koji has been showing signs of PTSD ever since the moose attacked him while he was out on his chain a few winters ago.  When he whimpers and growls in his sleep, I wake him gently, telling him softly that everything is all right.  If I don’t wake him quickly, his agitation escalates.  As I sat here writing this, I heard his agitated breathing from over on the bed where he and Doug are sleeping again, and called out to him.  He started, raised his head, looked around, then his tail thumped the bed a couple times, he lowered his head, and went back to sleep.  Doug, who sleeps like a rock, never stirred.
  

  • 1:28 pm
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