April 8, 2018

White Dog put her head on my shoulder. “Don’t hate him,” she said, “he needs your love and understanding more than ever.” I held Roman’s muzzled face in my hands and wrestled with fear and emotions that could easily change our lives forever.

We had just returned from leaving Sachi at the emergency vey hospital where in a few hours he would have his eye removed. It was 4am.

 Roman has been working on learning boundaries and developing more self control when it came to situations that startled or angered him. And he has been making progress. He and I, and all of the White Dog Army, regularly practice sitting together side-by-side, waiting for treats together calmly, touching and bumping. Roman is seriously applying what we drill but he still has big issues once he is triggered with not being able to walk away or turn off his response. Because of that, when he is not strictly supervised he wears a muzzle for his own protection…and that of the others.

At night, Roman has been going without the muzzle mostly because of my guilt feelings about his being treated as Hannibal Lecter. Roman sleeps away from the others in the kitchen on the other side of the house. The White Dog Army sleeps in our bedroom and the office. Once we all retire, all stay in place. Nilla with her dementia is gated on her corner mattress; Sachi sleeps on our bed.

We will never know what prompted our Little Man to slip off of the bed and go adventuring through the darkened house. Maybe he heard a noise; maybe he was mousing; maybe he was answering the siren song of fate. Maybe he was just being Sachi, the macho little brat that pushes the others sometimes with nip or sniffing inappropriately, or pawing a challenge. He, too, has his uncontrolled moments that the others have just learned to ignore.

His screams threw Steve across the bed in an instant from a dead sleep. He headed instinctively toward the sound without yet even processing. He found Roman over Sachi and pulled the 40lb boy away. Roman took off into the yard; a blur through the dogdoor .

And then I heard Steve’s wail. “Oh my god, his eye!” Both rushed into the bedroom and Sachi with an eyeball bulging from its socket was placed into my arms. The rest of the WDA surged in response.

Clearly the eye was beyond repair and he needed medical attention immediately.

Go out get Roman and muzzle him, I directed Steve. Then get dressed. Roman was cowering in the far corner of the yard and his protection was applied. I held Sachi in my arms cooing soothing noises while Steve robotically dressed. I wrapped our baby in a towel; there was next to no blood but it prevented Steve from looking too closely at the eye…I could tell Steve was fighting meltdown over his special boy’s predicament. He cradled Sachi against his chest as I threw on clothes and shoes. “Keys, phone, wallet?” “Yes.” In less than 15 minutes we were in the car.

I did not realize just how close we are to the relatively new ER/Critical Care office…4 minutes. I have worked with Dr. Welcome on several projects and was thrilled when he and his wife opened this facility. Dr. Welcome has focused his career on emergency medicine and I trusted him.

There was thankfully no other patients when we were buzzed in. The tech took Sachi back to triage and Dr. Welcome came into the room almost immediately. “The eye will not be able to be saved,” he said. But we already knew that. We explained Sachi’s special breathing issues that would affect surgery and agreed that our boy would be given a sedative and a time to calm down before the operation would take place. And then we left filled with guilt, feeling like we had not done enough to protect our pushy little brat, and trying to find balance.

The others gathered around Steve and led him to the bedroom to offer comfort. Zsofia, Sachi’s BFF, lay pressed against Steve with her head across his lap. Steve stroked her reassuring himself as much as our darkest white dog.

“Oh Roman,” said I with him in the now dark living room. “What have you done?” and I wrapped my arms around him and cried. He licked my hand and rested his head on my knee.

Update: Sachi came through surgery without any problems. We will be allowed to pick him up early this evening and bring him home.