Night watch

It’s nearly 5.00AM. I’ve just wakened Argos. In 15 minutes I’ll rouse him again, and again 15 minutes after that, and again, until the Hubbit wakes and takes over for a while so I can sleep. Argos is irritated by this. He grumbled at me the last time I woke him, 15 minutes ago, when I stroked him and called him a good boy. He hurts and he’s tired and he just wants to sleep, but the vet said he might have a concussion and can’t be left to sleep for 24 hours.

It might not be a concussion. We’re not sure what it is – whether he ingested or inhaled something toxic, or ran into something spiky, or stuck his head into a bush or a hole and got clawed by something – we just don’t know. But the vet thinks most of the signs, although confusing, point to a head injury, so that’s what we’re going with, for now.

Here’s what happened. I was sitting at my computer, working my way through Trevor Noah Steven Colbert Seth Meyers interspersed with random actual fake news bits and also dog rescue stories, because sometimes you just have to have a happy ending…

…and Peter Pan, who won’t try to talk to me when I’m wearing headphones, put a scrap of paper on my keyboard.

“Argos is running into things. I just noticed this 5 minutes ago. Not sure what’s wrong. I just saw him do this as I went outside for my little walk.”

I ran outside and found Argos cowering on the edge of the veranda, an embarrassed look on his face, his eyes swollen and bloody.

The vet I trust wasn’t answering her phone, so I raced to the emergency clinic. His eyes are scratched and bleeding, with abrasions and puncture wounds in the inner eyelids. He has a puncture wound right in the middle of his forehead, but no other bites or scratches anywhere. He is blind. His blood pressure was high, his heart rate was slow and irregular, and he is still lethargic.

The very young vet was baffled. She had never seen anything like it. (There are probably quite a few things she has never seen anything like. She is really very young – not just by comparison with me. It terrified me that she and her array of beeping machines was all there was between us and an intolerable outcome.)

She flushed out his eyes, treated him for inflammation and pain, put him on an IV drip and ran blood work, then disappeared for a long time. After a while I asked whether he was coming back, and a tech told me she was “doing research”. This didn’t entirely reassure me.

And it didn’t help. When she reemerged she still didn’t know what was wrong with him. I called home and demanded that the Hubbit haul Peter Pan out of his shower to answer questions. That’s when Peter Pan mentioned that Argos had been hassling the cattle and Vos, my big old horse. He might have been inside the corral with them. (I have no idea how he gets into the corral, but he does – and no amount of fence-fixing stops him. He’ll go for a little bit of forever without bothering them, and then he remembers How Much FUN It Is, and he notices that my attention is Elsewhere, and he figures out or creates another way through the fence.) Anyway, I passed the information on to the vet, who decided he’d been kicked in the head. She wanted to do x-rays but I said no, ignoring her disapproval, hammering down my guilt, because there’s not a lot we can do about a bad non-human head injury in this town over a weekend (specialist care is at the vet school a couple hours drive away), and $350 was too high a price to satisfy her curiosity. I said we’d simply assume he was concussed and proceed accordingly.

Then I turned down her invitation to keep him under observation. More hundreds of dollars that we don’t have, and for what? He wouldn’t tell her if he felt worse or different. I brought him home, where he belongs. He followed his nose unhesitatingly from the car to the front door and for a moment I thought he was okay after all, but then he tried to go onto the grass to pee and fell off the veranda. He still can’t see.

It’s getting harder to wake him. Last time I called him several times, then petted him, and finally took his collar and shook him before he raised his head, searching for me in the darkness of my brightly lit office. (It’s possible that he’s ignoring me; he does that, sometimes. That’s the hope I’m hanging onto.)

The vet said if it was a bad head injury, he might become increasingly disoriented, even have seizures. He might never regain his sight. He might die.

I’m pinning my hope on the fact that he’s too darn stubborn to quit.

He’s loud and pushy and he won’t listen to anyone who isn’t me. He’s covered with scars because he won’t quit challenging the other dogs – he thinks it’s all fun, a game, getting up close and screaming and whacking them with a toy or body slamming them until they can’t stand it any more and try to rip his head off. If he gets out when the Hubbit is on the tractor he screams with excitement and bites the tires (and then I get mad at the Hubbit for not bringing him back inside, because if he managed to sink his teeth into the rubber and the tire kept rolling it could break his neck), and if we take too long driving through the gate he bites the front of the car (he’s broken his teeth mangling the number plate ). He’s mean to the Hubbit’s little princesses and ignores the chickens right up until I decide I can trust him (I can’t) and he won’t-won’t-won’t take his stare off the cat. He sneaks onto our bed when we’re asleep, and spreads out and makes himself heavy until I wake with a cramp all the way from hip to toes. When he’s outside and wants in, he stands up and hammers so hard on the french door and windows with his scimitar toenails that he’s scratched the glass. When he’s inside, sometimes he covers my head with kisses to let me know he wants out … and sometimes he just pees on the furniture.

He really is an asshole, and he’s a lunatic, a terror, a deranged genius, and the Hubbit can barely stand him.

He’s my ally. My comrade. My first defence against the Black Dog. Life without him is inconceivable.

And he’s not a quitter.

He’s not a quitter.

He won’t quit.

Let’s talk. Whom do you love that makes you crazy, makes you laugh, and keeps you focused on what matters? Have you ever been sick at heart at the thought you might lose them?