…and Speeding Shiba Inu Owners too!

I’ve told this story so many times now - verbally, in IM, and by email - that I’m losing track of who knows and who doesn’t! I only just told my SISTER about it today and it happened on Saturday morning. As I was just answering “what happened” again by email, I realized I should POST it and then I can just point people here instead of rewriting.

Snickers and I went to the NYC Shiba Inu meetup this past Saturday morning at the Madison Square Park dog run. Snickers was having a BLAST because it was COLD out, so he was playing chase with a bunch of dogs. He kept coming up to me and asking ME to play though, so finally I did. I took off chasing him. We made it from the west end of the run to the east and had turned around running back and just as I was picking up speed, I crossed paths with a Pit Bull that was also playing chase. The Pit was solid muscle, about 60 pounds maybe and going WAY faster than I was. I collided with him and went up and over. I was airborn and then crash landed (in pea gravel) on my right knee.

It hurt so bad when I hit the ground that I couldn’t do ANYTHING at first. Someone came over and gave me a pull up and put me on a bench. When I finally stopped going “ow ow ow ow” and caught my breath, I realized my jeans were ripped open and my favorite pair of silk long undies were torn and my knee was bleeding profusely. That was when I made a serious, second error in judgement. I peeled back my bloody jeans to look at it. on an empty stomach with no coffee yet that AM. Oops. Suddenly everything looked like I had wax paper between me and the world and everyone sounded reeeeeeealy faaaar off. Apparently I was about to faint. I finally came to my senses and there was Snick, sitting next to me on the bench staring into my face. I’d like to think he was asking “are you ok?” but it was more like “why did you stop chasing me?”

During all this, one of the meetup members went and bought supersized bandaids and antiseptic. I couldn’t use the antiseptic because my knee was filthy and I was queasy, but the bandaids were a lifesaver. After much debate about the hospital, I accepted an offer of a ride home from another couple of meetup members. I felt SSOOOOO guilty for cutting Snick’s morning short, because he’d been having so much fun and he was kind of like “why are we leaving” but he was so, very good.

After I got home (and up to the fifth floor), I managed to get out of my clothes and into a hot bath to get some of the dirt out of the disaster formerly known as my knee. There are a lot of gross details that no one needs to know, but I went to my doctor on Monday afternoon. She gave me a tetanus shot and strict instructions to stay off of it while it heals. She was impressed with my cleaning and bandaging, so that was good. It appears that I haven’t done any new internal damage; it’s just soft tissue damage. The massive pain when I hit the ground was more from an old injury (calcified cartilage from a horseback riding accident years ago) than the current impact.

You know what the craziest thing was? The woman that owned the dog I collided with never even bothered to come over and see if I was OK. It totally wasn’t her dog’s fault, or her fault, but if your dog was involved in a hit and run and came out unscathed while the other party was down for the count wouldn’t you at least say something out of common courtesy? When I was limping out to go home, she was merrily watching her dog play chase like nothing had happened! Very bizarre.

I go back to the doc (I keep wanting to say vet) for a recheck on Monday.

Anyway, that’s the scoop! Sorry I haven’t been writing or reading much for the past week. I’ve been super busy at work, busy with freelance stuff, busy with the holidays and then busy with healing!