Chance Encounters

We cherish our little companions. We worry about their welfare, we welcome their attention, we enjoy their company, we encourage their antics. They enrich our lives through laughter and the minutiae of their needs, the peculiarities and singularities of their personalities. We try to anticipate how whatever we do will impact on their well-being, and we do our best to protect them from harm.

With all the best intentions in the world - similar to loving and raising children - not every untoward event can be thwarted let alone anticipated. And so it was, yesterday, when we walked down the street on which we live, something we've done hundreds of thousands of times before, with our little dogs, after our morning ravine walk, that mini-disaster struck.

Button, the older and wiser of our little dogs, a black miniature Poodle-Pomeranian, is paranoid about stinging insects. Flies and ordinary beetles and bugs don't bother her at all. It's as though she is able to distinguish between harmless types and those that present a potential threat. She becomes inordinately nervous around wasps, bees, hornets, horseflies, and mosquitoes.

She knows what they're capable of. And she does her utmost to avoid close contact with them. She's had occasion to learn, back in the days when she was young. Once, she was stung by a bee in our backyard and that encounter left her with the knowledge of what pain is, and how it resulted in her left hind leg being immobilized for the better part of a day.

And once, when we'd gone for a walk in the woods after a summer afternoon of canoeing, we chanced upon a swarm of deerflies which made directly for her. We grabbed and hoisted her, and ran out of those woods. Another time, when we'd descended our way off a mountain and reached a point close to the trailhead, we walked into a swarming mass of wasps and those miserable pests burrowed into her eyes, her haircoat, and occasioned another grab-and-run.

This time, walking the short loop back home from our neighbourhood ravine, she happened to walk close to the street curb, where leaves had assembled. I saw her leap, then immediately favour her left back leg, holding it at an awkward angle, while attempting to walk on. Her leg was trembling uncontrollably; she stopped, looked at me, and I stooped to see whether she had picked up a bramble, a rose thorn.

Feeling under the soft pads of her foot I withdrew something, and flicked it onto the lawn next to the curb. Without my eyeglasses I wasn't able to positively identify it, but I had the feeling it was a wasp. She continued to hobble and to tremble, so I hoisted her and we walked to our driveway where I put her down. We examined her closely, could see nothing amiss, but clearly something was quite wrong.

We bathed her feet, carefully wiped her. She began painfully and aimlessly, restlessly maneuvering herself around the house, going from one spot to another, obviously seeking relief. She would stop, raise the affected foot, lick it repeatedly, even gently nibble at it, but could find no relief. We placed her in one of her beds, feeling time would look after the immediacy of the pain.

We thought about administering Medicam, but desisted. Again the leg-lifted ambling, the trembling, the licking, the hobbling back and forth. She tried to settle down, to rest, perforce to sleep, but was unable to find any peace. We had garden work to do, and she wanted to go out to the backyard with us. Once there, she began determinedly nibbling grass. Soon she threw up - once, twice - small portions of the breakfast she had eaten hours earlier.

She seemed to have recovered somewhat, was using her affected leg with more confidence. We went around to the front gardens and she sniffed about as usual, then went off to defecate, although this was highly unusual at this time of day for her. After which she dug into the soil beside the grass between a garden bed and the lawn and settled herself down into the moist, cool earth, and slept.

Comfortably. Her ordeal solved by some inner wisdom of self-treatment.