Izzy Loses Us

OK, so last time I was freaking out over Izzy eating a discarded hamburger. Turns out that little escapade was only a warm up for the freak out that happened yesterday at my mother-in-law’s.

Bruce, Izzy, and I were visiting my mother-in-law and hanging out in the backyard enjoying the grass, the birds, the sun, and her next door neighbor making a ton of noise doing construction on his house over Labor Day weekend. We rigged the yard with makeshift barriers at the sides of the house to keep Izzy from leaving the backyard. And I was keeping an eye on her from the patio. Or at least I thought I was. Mostly I was commenting on how lovely it was for Izzy to be able to have the freedom to explore on her own without being attached to a leash or without me having to hover over her. And then—I swear—no sooner did I make that stupid comment, than I realized that my dog was NOWHERE in sight.

My worst nightmare became a reality. My dog was gone.

I ran out to the front of the house and called her.

"Izzy! Izzy! Izzy, come! Izzy!"

My little dog, yes the one with really good recall, the one with titles and ribbons, the one known for swift responses to commands and cues was not responding to her name. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Where could she have gone? She couldn't be far, right? I had just seen her, for crying out loud. As I looked up and down my mother-in-law's street, I realized that here on suburban Long Island there were a million places Izzy could be. If she ran into someone's back yard, and then suddenly another yard, and another, she could quickly be blocks away. Or she could be trapped in a yard with an unfriendly dog. Or she could have run into a street and gotten hit by a car. Or some child could have seen the cute little doggy with the waggly tail and picked her up and brought her inside. Or she could be following her nose and chasing a squirrel or a cat into some wooded area. . . Suddenly Glen Cove turned into an impenetrable maze of houses, yards, and streets. Where to start looking first? My stomach dropped. And then clenched. And then rose up to my mouth, and I had to work really hard to keep from throwing up.

Bruce took one direction and I took another. We ran, yelling her name at the top of our lungs (Important note: Name your dog something easy to yell constantly and loudly. "Izzy," it turns out, happens to be a great name to scream out every second on the second.).

Gloria, Bruce's mom, stayed in the backyard. After my run down the street, I returned to the backyard to check in. No dog. As I headed out again, to take a different path around the neighborhood a million thoughts flooded in. The very real possibility of having to leave without Izzy started to sink in. I might be going home without her. I was imagining the long drive back to the city with her, the first night being home, knowing that she was lost on Long Island, not knowing if she was OK. . . How could I have let this happen?

After what felt like hours of running up and down Glen Cove streets (although Bruce swears this whole thing took less than ten minutes), I turned the corner to head back to the house. And down at the end of the block, I saw Bruce out in the middle of the street, waving his arms.

"I found her!"

I ran inside and smothered Izzy with hugs and kisses. She responded by bounding around the living room and leaping in the air. At one point she took an incredibly high, spirited leap off the stairs and just missed slamming her head into the wall by millimeters. Great. I was worried that my lost dog was lying somewhere dead, and here Bruce finds her, and she’s so worked up she ends up killing herself. She must have been picking up on the general atmosphere of what I can only describe as aggressive relief, and was running around to try to shake off the nervous energy around her.

"Where was she?" I asked him, "Where did you find her?"

"She was at the back door," Bruce said. “She was just standing on the stoop, looking inside. It was like she was wondering where the hell we all went."

And then he said, wait for it—wait for it—

"Jess, I don't think she ever left the backyard."

OH. MY. GOD. Maybe we didn't lose the dog after all. The dog lost us!

Who knows if Izzy went on a little sightseeing trip by herself, or if she never left the property, either way, we were lucky; the three of us all went home together. Izzy has tags, and a microchip, so hopefully if she did ever become separated from us, some kind soul would contact us. But meanwhile, all’s well that end’s well, and we three are very lucky. And we know it. Oh, yeah. And Izzy will NEVER be off leash again.

Izzy Found a Hamburger

Little dog, little mouth, no big deal—right?

Ummm, nope.

My little dog has a ridiculous amount of pressure per inch in her mouth. How do I know this, you may ask? Well, a few evenings ago Izzy and I left our training facility after a really good class. I mean it was really good. Izzy was on, I was on. We worked together like a couple on a ballroom dance floor (or so I like to think). I was so proud of both of us and was kvelling in our success as I was walking Iz around the perimeters of the parking lot before we buckled in for the ride home. And then I saw it: an open Styrofoam hamburger container. Unfortunately, while I noticed only the container, Izzy noticed the HAMBURGER lying nearby and grabbed it.

I panicked. A dog had been poisoned in the parking lot a couple of weeks earlier; an open container of green liquid was left on the premises and a dog had gotten into it. (A fast-thinking instructor had given hydrogen peroxide to the dog to make it vomit, and sent the owner to an emergency vet. The dog is fine now.) I was sure that somehow this soggy disgusting hamburger in my dog's mouth had been poisoned and left for an unsuspecting bottomless-pit greedy chow-hound like mine. I told Izzy to drop it, but no fool, she. No way she was going to let go of that prize of a soggy burger. So I bent down and pulled away the sections of bun and burger that were outside her long little snout. Then in a frenzy, I stuck my hand in her mouth to try to scoop out the rest.

I was able to get my fingers inside her mouth, but the second they were there, Izzy clamped down hard. And I mean HARD. My left index finger was lodged in the back of her mouth, between her jaws. I tried putting one hand over her nose, hoping that I could make it so difficult for her to breathe through her nose, she'd have to open her mouth; it didn't work. I don't know how I got my finger out of there, but I did. I tried again to open her mouth, but failed this time. I yelled, "Drop it" again, tried covering her nose again, and again was met without results. If I was reading Izzy's expression correctly (and I think I was), she was saying, "Drop dead, sister, this burger is MINE, and I mean it." Then I had the teeniest moment of clarity and thought to myself that I was probably being hysterical and the burger was most likely someone's left-overs and not some evil item of dog destruction.

So I sat back on my heels, and watched Izzy gulp down the remaining hamburger. The second she was done, she looked at me with soft happy eyes and pranced over to the car. Sure, she was in good spirits--she just topped off an hour of working for treats with a burger, but I was still so wound up my legs were shaking. When I tried to start the car, I discovered my right pointer finger hurt so badly that I couldn't put any pressure on it at all. I had to cross my left hand over the steering wheel to actually turn the key. I was shocked that I was in that amount of pain from my own little dog.

As we were driving home, I started to worry that maybe I had hurt Izzy's jaw by all the yanking and pulling on it. So I threw her a treat to see if she would eat. She did. Iz was bright eyed, and seemed fine. And every time I looked over at her, she was looking right back.

Then she did something she's never done before in the car. She crawled into my lap. (Yes, I know she should have been secured in the car, and she usually is buckled in.) She leaned back against me, and put her head right under my chin and sighed. My heart, just like the Grinch's, grew three times its size right then and there. Seriously, I felt it. She stayed like that for a couple of minutes until I came to a stop and had her go back to her seat.

A behaviorist would most likely disagree, but that gesture, that little bit of contact she initiated, felt to me like a true-blue apology. And maybe it wasn't the "I'm so sorry. I ate that hamburger and I know I was stupid and dangerous and I'll never do it again, never, ever, ever." kind of apology. But she was definitely checking in, making sure all was right with me, with us, with the world. And at that moment, it really was.