The Electric Fence

It’s been over a month, and I’m still not sure I want to talk about this. I’m not sure I’ll be able to talk about this, not in the way I’d like to, because I’m still too close to it and just thinking about it makes me hammer-hearted and on the verge of throwing up. I still wake up several times every night, sucking air like a fish on concrete.

Then again, maybe talking about it will help me get over it. Okay, I doubt I’ll ever get over it, but at least I might get to a place where I can deal, where I can go through a day without these bouts of panic and regret.

This July, I almost lost my younger daughter, Miss M.  I almost lost my little white dog in the bargain, too, but it’s the near loss of my child that keeps me up at night.

It’s an unthinkable thing, the loss of a child, and now I can’t do anything but think about it. All the time.

I think about how it just took a second, just a wink of an open door, a flash of tiny white fur barreling down the street, to almost change everything.

Ack, I’m dancing around this and now it kind of sounds too dramatic, so I’ll just tell you what happened.

Miss M. and I had taken the Mozz-man for a late afternoon walk. It was a walk full of bunnies and birds and flowers to sniff and cut grass, ripe for rolling in. In short, it was full of all the things a puppy loves best.

When we got to the front door, I opened it and said to Miss M., “I’m going to get the mail, okay? You can take off his leash but shut the door, okay?”

And then I turned my back and walked to the mailbox.

Which was the bigger mistake? The way I mixed up the order of things by telling her “take off the leash, shut the door” or the way I turned my back on them before checking?

I don’t know and I guess it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that excited puppies are very fast and frantic 8-year olds are very fast and middle-aged women in flip-flops aren’t nearly as fast.

They shot across the street, and as hard and as loud as I hollered for M. to stop, her panic over the loss of her puppy rendered her deaf, and when he darted under a small opening under a fence–a fence facing a VERY busy street–she wiggled under it, too, hot on his heels.

I, of course, was far too big to wiggle under that fence. I ran to the next house, but they were fenced in too, and so was the next, and as I finally rounded the half-block, I saw a small white dog and a bare-footed little girl dash across that busy street. A street full of cars and screeching brakes and blaring horns. A busy street with 5pm rush-hour traffic and there wasn’t anything I could do but watch it happen. I had to watch it happen and I couldn’t do anything and just like that I almost lost them both.

“Please don’t tell Daddy,” she sobbed, limping home on bloody feet. “I’ll never do it again, IswearIswearIswear. Please don’t tell Daddy.”

Of course, I immediately went into the house and called Daddy, crying and keening like a lunatic. And then I called Mama, knowing she’d understand, because when I was a little girl, I darted in front of a car, too. The driver barely stopped in time and she was horrified and furious, and Mama threw me over her shoulder, beating on my backside the entire way home.

I never forgot it.

I’ll never forget this, either, no matter how hard I wish it away.

The day I almost lost my daughter (and her little dog, too), I called about an electric fence for our yard.

It’s taken a few weeks, but the fence is in, and now we begin the arduous process of training Mozzy not to cross the fence. We try to train him not to cross the fence before we activate the sucker, so hopefully he won’t have to get zapped much. Even though it’s not a high-voltage zap or a dangerous zap, it’s still sorta sucky for a dude to get zapped, so we’re trying to do things gently.

Although if I’m honest, if it prevents him from ever running into the street again, zap away. Zap him until the cows come home, as long as I never, ever…

Well, you know.

If I’m scarce around these parts, you can find me in the backyard, with a leash and a bulky shock collar and a little white dog.

Me, a dog, and my lucky, lucky life.