Tag Archives: Jerico the dog

May25

We Really Dodged a Bullet That Time

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Jerico does not like gunshots or other loud noises.

Content warning: guns, gunshots, bullet, danger, gun danger, potential for death.

I heard the gunshots, but I didn’t pay much attention to them until Jerico the dog tried to hide from them. He’s scared of gunshots (and most other loud noises) and he tried to get away from these in the corner where wires connect solar components. I didn’t want him damaging the wires, so I coaxed Jerico out of the corner and into the bed with me. I told him everything would be fine.

Gunshots are not unheard of where we live, but they are certainly not a daily occurrence. Occasionally we hear someone pop off a few rounds, but we chalk it up to target practice and go on with our lives. We live in the Wild West. Tumbleweeds roll down the dirt roads (for real) and sometimes guns are shot.

On this particular day, the shots went on and on. They were coming fast, but we could tell they weren’t close, so we went on with our lives that Friday afternoon.

I was lying in bed, messing around on my phone. We’d gone a little hike earlier in the day, and the heat and the sun had worn me out. I’d been lying in bed, messing around on my phone since about 3:30. I’d told myself I’d get out of bed at 4 o’clock and start dinner. Four o’clock came and went, and I was still lying in bed, messing around on my phone.

(Have you ever read the Dear Prudence advice column by Danny M. Lavery on Slate? I thoroughly enjoy reading that column; it’s what I was reading that Friday afternoon instead of cooking dinner.)

The Man was lying in bed too, watching television. He got out of bed and went into the kitchen. He stood at the sink facing the long window that runs across most of the width of our little trailer. I’m not sure what he was doing there in front of the window. Maybe he washed his hands. Maybe he prepared and ate a peanut butter sandwich. When he completed his task, he walked back to the bedroom in the back of the trailer and flopped down onto the bed. I’d heard shots the entire time he stood in front of the window, but I didn’t think the shots were close enough to worry about.

I’ll get up in a few minutes, I told myself. I’ll just finish reading the most recent column, I told myself, then I’ll get out of the bed and cook dinner.

Suddenly I heard a loud thunk! Something had hit the trailer!

Get on the floor! The Man yelled. Get on the floor!

I jumped off the bed and crouched between the exterior wall and the platform that lifts our mattress a few feet off the floor and provides under-bed storage for our three solar batteries. Jerico followed me out of the bed, and I held onto him so he wouldn’t leave the bedroom to meet The Man where he was lying on the floor between the bathroom and the hallway cupboard.

The Man grabbed the first phone he saw (mine) and dialed 911.

Some manic is shooting at my house! I heard him say to the emergency dispatcher who took his call. My window is busted out!

This is our kitchen window after the bullet went through it. Shattered. Busted. Scary.

When I’m lying in bed, my view of the kitchen and the kitchen window is mostly blocked by the wall between the bedroom and bathroom. While I’d heard the thunk of the bullet hitting the front window, I couldn’t see that the glass had been shattered from the impact. From The Man’s side of the bed, he had a clear view of the window and the sink below it. He’d seen the shattered glass before he jumped out of bed and threw himself onto the floor.

I heard The Man tell the 911 dispatcher that the police would never be able to find our place. He said we would meet the officer on the main road.

Com on, come on, The Man said to me once he hung up with the emergency dispatcher. We have to get out of here, he said as we fumbled around for our shoes. I managed to slip my feet into my grey Crocs; The Man ended up in his bedroom slippers.

We hopped into the truck, not knowing if another bullet was headed our way. The Man drove us to the main road, expecting to see a police officer at any moment.

Immediately after fastening my seat belt, I texted our nearest neighbor.

Someone shot out our front window, the text said. I sent the message at exactly 4:30pm.

The next event of note was the call from the deputy sheriff who had been dispatched to handle our emergency. He called to say he wouldn’t be able to respond to our situation for some time. He said we should give him directions to our house, then go home and wait for him there. It was as if he didn’t realize that someone had shot a bullet through our window and into our home. Maybe gunshots and bullets weren’t a big deal to him, but they certainly were important to us that afternoon.

While sitting in the passenger seat of our moving truck, I tried to wrap my head around what had just happened. I had many questions and no answers. Who had shot the gun? Where had the shooter been standing when the shot was fired? Was there a sniper on the loose? Had someone just killed his whole family and the bullet through our window was a byproduct of a massacre? Had the shot that sent a bullet through our window been made on purpose or by accident? Had a gun been fired at our window because the shooter thought our trailer was abandoned?

After calling the 911 dispatcher twice more and making known his displeasure with the runaround the deputy sheriff was giving us, The Man pulled the truck off the road. Neither of us knew what to do.

After a few minutes of sitting on the side of the road, we saw a sheriff’s department truck heading in our direction. The Man laid on the horn and the truck pulled over. The Man whipped our truck around and pulled up behind the deputy, but left quite a bit of distance between the two vehicles.

I really don’t want to see you get shot, I told The Man, so he got out of the truck with his hands high in the air. I kept my hands where the deputy could see them too.

The deputy was a woman, but she looked more like a girl. She probably wasn’t older than 25, but she looked about 15 years old. The Man talked to her outside, so I couldn’t hear their conversation.

Another sheriff’s department truck pulled up behind our vehicle. A short man walked over to where The Man and the female deputy were talking. I couldn’t hear what the new arrival said either, but The Man was back in the driver’s seat shortly. The deputies were going to follow us home.

We drove down the long dirt road with the deputy sheriffs behind us.

When we arrived at our property, we showed the deputies the shattered glass of the kitchen widow at the front of our trailer. When The Man and the male officer looked for the bullet on the floor inside, they found a small hole in the platform supporting our mattress. They then went outside and found the exit hole in the back wall of the trailer.

I think it was the female deputy who found the bullet. It was lodged in a wooden block supporting a small propane tank. Usually we had a bigger, taller propane tank sitting right there providing fuel for our refrigerator and stove and furnace and water heater, but when the large tank was empty, The Man put the small tank in its place. If the large tank had been sitting there, the bullet would have struck it instead of a block of wood. We imaged there would have been a large explosion and a fire.

The bullet that went through our trailer lodged in this block of wood. You can see the small propane tank sitting on top of the wooden block.

(We are probably wrong about the explosion and fire of our imaginations. According to the Propane 101 website,

…it would be hard to say that a propane tank will explode if it were hit by an airplane or bullet.

Yes, you can watch YouTube videos of people shooting propane tanks and ending up with fireballs, but the ones I’ve seen have involved a source of flame like a garden torch or road flares. In retrospect, without some additional fire source, I don’t think a propane tank would typically burst into flames upon being shot.)

After taking photos of our shattered window and getting our names, driver license numbers, etc, the cops took the bullet and set off to do some further investigation.

About that time, I received a text from our neighbor They had been out on a hike and only received my text about the shooting when they returned home. She said her husband JayJay was on his way over to our place.

Our neighbors are good people. They’re in our age group, funny and pleasant to talk with. Whenever they visit, they leave while I’m wishing they’d stay longer. They’ve come over for dinner, and JayJay has helped The Man with several repairs on our truck. Sometimes when we’re out for a walk, The Man and I stop in at their place, and sometimes they stop at our place to say hello. Of course, COVID-19 and the required physical distancing precautions have put a damper on our in-person friendship. However, a bullet through our window seemed to take precedence over the virus, and JayJay came right over.

Based on where the bullet entered our trailer, it seemed like there were only a few places from which it could have been shot. The most likely location, in JayJay’s opinion, was a place that seemed impossibly far to me. It was about half a mile away, but JayJay said the direction of the wind and the size of the gun (a .308) made it entirely possible for the bullet to travel that far.

JayJay asked The Man if he wanted to go talk to the people at the house where he thought the bullet had come from. I understood if The Man was a little hesitant. Those people had guns and (obviously) bullets. JayJay said he’d go with The Man, and The Man agreed. I stayed home with Jerico.

The Man and JayJay found the place from which the bullet that went through our window had been fired. The deputies had been there earlier. The cops asked the young men at the house if they’d been shooting. The young men told the cops they’d been shooting a .22; of course, the bullet that struck our trailer was from a .308, so the cops left without arresting anyone.

When The Man told the young men that a bullet from a .308 had shattered our window and traveled through our entire trailer, they all grew contrite. The fellow whose property they were on began weeping and embraced The Man.

Most of the young men at the house worked on a crew together. They somehow knew our neighbor and had come out to his place for a Friday night of fun. They had been partying for a while, and their party consisted of drinking whisky, eating barbecue, and shooting guns, among other things. The property owner told the visitors they could shoot the .22 but to leave the .308 alone. Of course, as soon as he walked away from the party, the visitors fired the .308. They told The Man and JayJay they’d heard the bullet ricochet, but the hadn’t been aiming at our trailer and they certainly hadn’t meant to hit anything.

The property owner offered to pay for our window. I don’t know it that’s actually going to happen, but I do appreciate the sentiment and the $20 bill he insisted The Man take. It’s difficult for me to stay mad at someone who is truly sorry for making a mistake. Of course, if The Man or I or (Heaven forbid!) Jerico had been injured or killed, forgiveness might have been a little more difficult for them to come by.

The next morning, I moved in front of the shattered kitchen window and calculated where I might have been standing had I been cooking dinner when the bullet came in. Had I been stirring vegetables cooking on the stove, I would have been ok, even with a bullet moving through the house. Had I been doing something in front of the left sink, my right arm would have probably been hit, grazed at best. If I had been standing at the right sink, I would have been hit between my breasts and my belly button. If I had been standing in front of the right sink, I might not be telling you this story today.

The Man measured the bullet’s path. If it had come straight through the trailer with no downward movement, it would have hit him where he was lying in the bed.

This is what our shattered window looked like from the outside.

Luckily that bullet had neither of our names on it. Luckily, neither of us was hurt. Luckily, no one’s life was ruined because some young men allowed alcohol to ruin their judgement.

No, I’m not scared to live where I do. A stray bullet could go through a window in Dallas or Detroit, Phoenix or Fargo, New Orleans or Nashville. For real, it could happen anywhere. Surely, a bullet through our window is a once-in-a-lifetime event.

On Saturday morning, we removed all the shattered glass from the kitchen window and covered the big window hole with cardboard. Now we’ll add “kitchen window” to the list of all the things we’ll eventually need to buy. Still, a kitchen window is a small price to pay. That bullet could have taken a life instead of a bit of glass.

I’m glad to have lived to see another day. I guess you could say Dear Prudence and procrastination saved may life.

Apr6

Sniffer

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Photo by Brandable Box on Unsplash

Nolagirl said she was sending a package, but she didn’t tell me what was in in it.

After traveling from southern Arizona to northern New Mexico, the package must have sat behind the counter of the mail room for at least a week before I was able to get there during business hours to pick it up. I was glad to finally have it in my possession.

Nolagirl had told me there were goodies for The Man in the package too, so I didn’t open it as soon as I picked it up. I threw it in the back seat of the truck, knowing we’d open it together once I returned home from work.

After work, I carried the package into the trailer. I told The Man that Nolagirl had sent us treats. We were both excited to discover what was inside the cardboard box.

I put the box on the floor while I removed my muddy shoes.

As soon as the box was on the floor, Jerico the dog was on it. He put his nose directly on the box and gave it some mighty sniffs. He was really excited to discover what was inside.

Is there food in there? The Man and I asked each other.

Jerico likes food. He enjoys eating, but he’s not what I would call food motivated. Food is not the driving force in his life. Sure, he gets excited by a bit of cheese or a canned fish treat, but he’s not a do-anything-for-food kind of dog. He has kibble in his bowl all the time, and he eats when he’s hungry, but he doesn’t overeat. He stays slim despite being allowed to eat whenever he wants.

The Man and I were skeptical that Jerico would be so enthusiastic about food that might be in the box. Maybe he’d act this way if there were meat in the box…but Nolagirl knew The Man and I are vegetarians. I doubted she would have sent us meat.

I got my shoes off and grabbed a pair of scissors to cut open the tape holding the flaps closed. Jerico continued to express interest in the box even after I lifted it from the floor.

I sliced into the tape, then pulled the flaps apart. I saw a small package of pistachios (which The Man and I shared right away), half a pound of Camilla brand red kidney beans, a box of granola bars, a box of breakfast cookies…and three blue rubber balls intended for playing racquetball.

While Jerico may not be motivated by food, he is certainly motivated by playing ball. Playing ball is Jerico’s most favorite thing in the whole world, the driving force in his life, and when he plays ball, the ball he plays with is a blue one intended for racquetball use. He was thrilled when I pulled those balls from the box and let him have one.

I was impressed that Jerico had sniffed out those balls through the cardboard box. What really amazed me, however, was that the particular smell that told him his favorite type of balls was in the box was still intact after Nolagirl touched them to put them in the box, after the box traveled from Nolagirl’s house to a post office to my mail room to our house, after the box sat in the mail room for more than a week, and after the box sat in the truck for hours while I was at work. All dogs have a keen sense of smell, but Jerico’s nose is something special.

Jerico is a hound dog. He’s part beagle, the vet said when The Man brought him in for his first checkup after being found as a puppy. You might not see the beagle in him at first glance, but when he throws his head back and starts barking loudly, his beagle heritage is apparent. He’s a beagle and he has a lot to say. He’s a beagle and he’s got quite a sniffer.

I don’t know if Jerico could sniff our a lost child or a fugitive from a law, but he proved he can sniff out a blue racquetball, even one he’s never touched.

I took this photo of the little sniffer sitting on top of the clean laundry in the backseat of the truck waiting for me to return from buying groceries one winter day.
Sep9

Sick Dog

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Jerico the Dog! (Photo by The Man)

The Man says Jerico the dog has suffered from acid reflux since he was a puppy. I don’t remember the first time I woke up in the night to find Jerico swallowing rapidly and repeatedly, but this situation became a running theme in our lives. When the swallowing began, a hunt for grass was on. Jerico would eat the grass (with gusto, obsessively) and eventually puke it up. The puking seemed to settle his stomach and let him rest.

There was grass for Jerico to eat in this meadow. (I took this photo.)

Finding grass was no problem if we were camped near a river or a meadow, but it was harder to come by if we were in a desert. I remember once waking up in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Santa Fe, NM at 4am to the sound of the swallowing dog. The parking lot landscape did not include nonnative grass growing like a lawn (Good for you, Santa Fe Wal-Mart!), so there was nothing for Jerico to eat to induce vomiting. We had to drive off into the dark to find another business (a school, actually) that did landscape with grass.

I worried about Jerico eating grass, especially from an area where it might have been sprayed with chemicals. Who knew what sort of pesticides grass in or around a parking lot might be subjected to? Even if the grass wasn’t sprayed with poisons, was it safe for Jerico to eat so much of it? The Man maintained that dogs naturally eat grass, and since eating grass was the only thing that made Jerico feel better, it was ok for him to do so.

The Man experimented with other remedies. I drove to a supermarket late one night to buy a bottle of Pepto-Bismol to cure Jerico’s ills. The Man poured a dose of the pink stuff down Jerico’s gullet, and it did seem to relieve his stomach woes. Baking soda dissolved in water seemed to work even better. Of course, Jerico didn’t enjoy having anything poured down his throat, so we often had a dried crust (either pink or white, depending on the remedy) on the floor on the morning after one of his attacks. 

If no humans were around when an attack happened and Jerico couldn’t get to grass, he would eat anything he thought might help. Unfortunately, what his dog brain thought might help never did. Once I left a long, thin strip of sheet hanging in the bathroom of the fifth wheel. (I was sure I’d find a use for it eventually.)  The Man came home to find Jerico had eaten it (then puked it back up) in a fit of acid reflux. Another time when we went on a hike that lasted waaay longer than we thought it would, Jerico chewed the portion of the plastic garbage bag that hung over the edge of the trash can. Luckily, he puked that up too. The Man lived in fear that Jerico would eat a plastic grocery store bag (or something equally dangerous) if he were to have an attack while we were away. Jerico didn’t stay home alone much.

We tried planting grass near the fifth wheel in the Sonoran Desert. I bought special organic “cat grass,” and The Man planted it, but it didn’t grow. I think it might have done better in a planter instead of going directly into the ground.

In retrospect, I see how Jerico’s bouts of acid reflux were getting more frequent. The Man must have recognized it too, even if only on a subconscious level. He did some research on diet and acid reflux and found that beef can exacerbate the condition. Jerico didn’t know it, but he’d had his last can of wet dogfood as a treat. He did get canned mackerel sometimes, when The Man could find a brand with no added salt or oil. The Man also switched Jerico to a dry food with salmon as the first ingredient. Jerico’s stomach seemed to do better for a while.

We’d gone into town early one day to take showers and do other errands. When I went to the parking lot after my shower, I saw The Man pulling the truck behind the building. I met him in the back where he’d let Jerico out to eat grass. I knew this meant Jerico was suffering from an attack. Throughout our day, we had to stop several times to let Jerico out to eat more grass. No matter how much he ate, it didn’t seem to help.

At home, he was no better. He kept trying to find something, anything he could eat to help relieve his discomfort. Unfortunately, there was no grass growing anywhere on our property. Finally, The Man (who was working to get our solar power system up and running) asked me to drive Jerico somewhere with grass he could eat.  I ended up driving about three miles before I found some actual grass growing.

I parked the truck on the edge of the road, and Jerico and I crept through the barbed wire fence to get to the patches of deep green grass. I felt like the father of the unborn Rapunzel stealing arugula from the witch to satisfy his wife’s cravings, but what else could I do? I didn’t want to send Jerico to the other side of the fence alone. What if he saw a rabbit and bolted? What if a coyote or a half-wild dog came along and wanted to fight? I felt safer trespassing with him.

I let him eat to his heart’s (stomach’s) content, then loaded him back into the truck. I hoped it was safe to take him home now.

At home he continued to swallow excessively. His stomach still hurt. He wanted more grass.

The Man mixed up some baking soda with water and poured the concoction down Jerico’s throat. We tried to keep the pup calm while we gave the remedy time to work. He was obviously uncomfortable and wanted to pace.

I wonder if dogs can have Zantac, The Man muttered, reaching for the phone to ask Google.

Turns out dogs can have Zantac. I got in the truck and made a trek to town to get the medication. Nearly two hours later, I got home with my precious cargo. The Man cut on of the tablets in half and pushed it down Jerico’s throat. We again tried to keep him calm, and this time after about half an hour, the medication actually worked. We were all able to get some rest that night.

About a week later, Jerico was at it again. We got home from another day of errands. Jerico jumped from the truck and started eating from clumps of grass The Man had recently transplanted. Thus began 18 hours of hell.

First he ate more grass than I’d ever seen him ingest. He literally ate the newly transplanted grass to death.     

When we brought him inside, he stayed in front of the door and paced. When we let him go outside again, he headed straight to the grass and started chomping on it again. This pattern was repeated throughout the evening.

At a quarter to six, the Man gave Jerico half a Zantac. Again, we tried to keep him calm while the medication did its magic. He never calmed down. He continued to swallow and pace. The medicine did no magic.

Around six o’clock, The Man wondered if we should make an emergency visit to a vet. He called the after-hours number of one of the veterinary offices in town. He didn’t specifically say his dog was in an emergency situation, so the woman who answered the phone made an appointment for us to go in the next day.

The only thing other than eating grass that seemed to ease Jerico’s distress was going outside and walking. We weren’t sure if he was soothed by the distraction of the change of scenery or the motion of movement or by the fact that he was in an upright position (or some combination of the three factors), but he was calmer when we took him outside. We spent a lot of time that evening taking Jerico outside, thinking (hoping, praying) he was better, taking him inside, then realizing he wasn’t better at all.

At ten o’clock The Man decided to give Jerico another half a Zantac. I was afraid it was too soon to give him more, but The Man said obviously the first dose hadn’t done anything to solve the problem. He thought a second dose might make things better for Jerico so we could all get some sleep.

The second dose of Zantac did not allow anyone to get any sleep. Jerico continued to move around and swallow. When we took him outside for the last pee of the night, he headed directly to the transplanted clumps of grass and tried to eat some more.

Around midnight I had Jerico on his leash, walking with him around our property when he barfed up a wad of grass that had the approximate look (size, shape, color) of an unshucked cob of corn. Gross! The grass had come back up, but that didn’t solve the problem.

We continued to walk around past 1am, when I grew too tired to stand. Jerico and I went into the trailer and got in the bed with The Man who’d had the pleasure or an hour of sleep.

Jerico never settled down, never stopped swallowing. I got a few hours of fitful sleep, but Jerico’s distress kept me from resting. Around 5am I took him outside again. Sunrise seemed to bring him some relief, although he was by no means well. We were glad he had an appointment with a vet for that day. None of us wanted to spend another night like the one we’d just had.

We arrived at the appointment right on time. Everyone working at the office was friendly and kind. We were brought into an exam room with a vet tech; the doctor came in shortly after. The Man explained everything that had been happening, and the doctor agreed with the diagnosis of acid reflux. He recommended The Man give Jerico 10 mg of Prilosec every day as a preventative measure.

What about eating grass? I asked the vet.

He said grass is really hard on a dog’s throat, mouth, and stomach and we should keep Jerico from eating it if we could.

After nearly two weeks on Prilosec and the special food we bought at the vet’s office, Jerico hadn’t had a single episode. He hadn’t tried to eat grass even once, and he only swallowed in a normal manner. I was glad he was feeling better, and I was glad we were all able to get some sleep.