Disaster

I had no idea where we were stopping, probably somewhere in eastern Colorado. It sort of didn’t matter, since every place looked the same. Especially at that point, since it was eleven o’clock at night.

We stopped for gas, and then drove about half a mile to a huge grass and dirt field. Far off in the distance were highways seemingly surrounding the place, but it wasn’t too noisy, and we could walk the dogs without interference.

Because it was secluded, and because the dogs were not having a meal at this stop, we decided that rather than set up the fencing, we were going to walk them on leashes. It was the second time we’d done this, and we were pretty good at it.

We took them off one RV at a time. I put a leash on each one, and then helped them down the steps to one of our team waiting to walk them. When they’d done what they had to do, we loaded them back on and went on to the next RV. It sounds methodical and overly careful, and it probably was, but it felt like the only way we could be in total control of things.

I had neglected to bring choke chains, which was not very bright of me. While the name sounds cruel and punitive, choke chains are the proper devices to use when walking dogs. This is especially true of our dogs, most of which are not used to being walked on a leash. But since I hadn’t brought chokers, we attached the leashes directly to each dog’s regular collar.

Mary Lynn was walking Jenny, a smallish Lab mix who is mostly black, with white markings. She is by far the quickest and most agile dog we have, and one of the smartest. She’s amazingly fast, and can jump higher than any dog I’ve ever seen.

Suddenly, and I have no idea how it happened, Mary Lynn was no longer walking Jenny. Instead, she had somehow escaped the leash.

Mary Lynn screamed, and by the time I looked over, there was no sign of Jenny. She had taken off running at high speed into the darkness, off in the direction of a highway that had to be half a mile away. It was a distance that Jenny could cover very, very quickly.

So we spent a full minute staring into the darkness, screaming “JENNY!” There was some highway noise around us, and I couldn’t imagine she was still close enough to hear us, but we kept yelling.

This wasn’t the worst nightmare I could foresee for this trip, but it was close. I had no idea what we could do. We certainly couldn’t just continue on our merry way, leaving her behind. We would never see her again; maybe no one would ever see her again.

It was even worse than if a dog was to get sick and needed to be hospitalized. In that case we could find a vet and leave the ill dog there. Then we could fly back whenever it was well enough to come home.

But this left us paralyzed, and the possibilities for dealing with it were not very appealing. We could load all of the dogs into two RVs, leaving one of them behind with a few people to search. Or we could leave one person behind, who could follow in a rented car if Jenny was found.

We were all stunned. The entire purpose of the trip was to care for these dogs, and even though it was nobody’s fault (except mine for forgetting the choke collars), we would always look back on the trip as a tragic failure.

The only positive aspect to this was that before we left, Debbie painstakingly prepared all new collars and tags, with our new contact information, for the dogs to wear. They had our Maine address and my cell phone number. It was a small consolation, but at least if Jenny was found, the person finding her would know whom to call.

There was nothing to do in the moment except begin walking in the direction that Jenny had run. I didn’t know what we could accomplish, but Erik and I started doing so. The others would stay behind, to take care of the dogs that we hadn’t lost.

And then suddenly I thought I saw some motion in the distance, and a few seconds later, Jenny went by us, a blur in the night. She headed straight for the closed door of the RV that she’d been riding in and started scratching at it, panting heavily but with a big smile on her face. She’d had a great adventure, but it was time to go home.

Everybody surrounded her, petting her, and someone attached another leash to her collar. But it wasn’t necessary; Jenny had no intention of running away. Been there, done that. She just wanted to get back with her friends, and Debbie opened the door and let her in.

Apparently, Jenny was enjoying the trip a hell of a lot more than I was.

The incident had left everybody shaken and had cost us more than an hour. We were all tired, and nobody was eager to spend another night trying to sleep on the vehicles. We asked the GPS to find us a nearby hotel, and fortunately there were a couple of them only six miles away.

We drove there, and the first one we reached had a NO VACANCY sign up in front. If it was full, it must have been cheap; this was not exactly a Four Seasons we’re talking about. Fortunately, the second one was nicer and had vacancies, so we parked in the rear of their parking lot, and Debbie and I went into the office.

We rented six rooms for eight people, since Joe and Terri would obviously share a room, as would Erik and Nick. We made plans to get together at six o’clock in the morning. That would give us five hours sleep, or I should say it would give them five hours sleep. Emmit, Debbie, and I would stay on the RVs, since there was no way we could leave the dogs alone. Any sleep we got would be a bonus.

I finally fell asleep for a couple of hours, and then reluctantly made the rounds at six o’clock. I was amazed at how everybody once again got up eager and ready to go. They claimed to be looking forward to the new day, even though it promised to be pretty much like the old day, which had not exactly been a barrel of laughs.

Cyndi Flores reported that it took a couple of hours for the room she was in to stop shaking, but she finally realized it was just the residual effect of being on the RV for so long.

I tipped the person at the front desk, and we all took turns taking showers in the rooms, then had coffee in the lobby. Once we’d accomplished this and were feeling human, we walked and fed the dogs, and we were back on the road by about seven thirty.

There was no way we were going to stick to our original schedule, so I called ahead and moved the room reservations in Maine back a day. The people at Damariscotta Lake Farm were completely amenable to the change, amazingly so since the five rooms we were taking represented all the rooms in their hotel.

Then I adjusted the flight reservations for people to get back home, a process that I expected to be a hassle, but which turned out not to be very difficult at all. When I was finished, all the flights were rescheduled for Saturday, and unless something went very wrong, we would definitely make it.

I hoped it would be the only time we’d have to make these changes. Jenny, for her part, promised not to cause any more problems.