I have the dubious distinction of having owned two dogs who have ended up on the outside of a moving vehicle. Petal’s tumble made me paranoid about ensuring the windows were not open far enough to allow spillage. Halo’s is a tale of prey drive and faulty window operation.
We were driving to the mountains to do some hiking – Halo was about 9 months old and in the back seat of my (now) ex-boyfriend Phil’s Pathfinder with Petal. The window was open about 6 inches so that Halo could stand on the arm rest and put her head out. Petal couldn’t reach the window so only got residual wind gusts – it’s just safer that way.
I looked back and thought ‘The window is open a bit far’ and voiced my concern. Halo could get her head out and to my eye it looked a little too much like the body could follow. Here’s where Murphy’s Law steps in.
We had just entered a playgound zone which meant we slowed to 30km/hr – this is a Very Lucky Happenstance – when a large orange tabby cat decided to cross the road and Phil said ‘Look Halo, there’s a cat’ and I thought ‘Oh. Shit.’
I looked back just in time to see Halo with her eye on the prize and that maniacal gleam they get when they think the prey is doomed. She forced the power window down about an inch and tumbled from the truck. Phil had anticipated her exit and was stopping before she hit the ground. She had landed on the pavement, lost her footing, likely rolled a couple times and started to limp her way around the truck to the sidewalk. Thankfully the cat was forgotten. By this time I too was leaping from a stopping vehicle and grabbed her as she came around the front of the truck and had a look.
Barring a couple scrapes and some missing hair she seemed to be fine. I dusted her off and trotted her up and down a bit to see if there was any lameness but she – like Petal – shook off the fall like a trooper. The expression on her face said ‘How did I end up here?” She got back in the truck, the window went up so there was only a half inch gap and Halo started looking around for the cat again.
Halo, like Petal, did not learn her lesson and would have exited the car on several more occassions upon seeing rabbits, squirrels, cats, gophers and birds were it not for the inch wide crack no dog could fit through. I, however, have learned my lesson and really, I’m the only one who needs teaching.
2 comments:
Again, my emotions would have gone from panic to fear & worry to plain just angry. What we do for our puppies.
Y'know, my brother once fell out of the family car. Bizarre, really, since there were no cats around at all.
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