After six and a half long terrible days, our Ginger is finally back home! Here’s what happened:
I got a call around 5:30pm from a strange area code. Everyone that’s called with information has been from a unfamiliar area code, because most of them are tourists. It was hard to get a connection but I kept trying to call the guy back. He said: I think we have your dog. She was apparently hanging around at a group campsite in Dead Horse State Park (a bit of irony that freaked us out: Ingrid pretends that Otto is a cow, and Ginger is her horse; on one of our quests to find her we found a dead cow!). They had seen our homemade poster on the highway. I rushed there with Ingrid (Andrew was in town getting more dog search supplies; I called him immediately of course). When I was a mile from the location, Andrew showed up. Hmm, I don’t know how he did that, when I had a ten minute advantage distance wise. Anyway, the guy met us at the gate and took us to his campsite.
Andrew drove in first. There were a bunch of men standing around. I couldn’t see her. Andrew revved his engine and called her name. I saw her crawl out from behind a car. She didn’t recognize him and was afraid of him. Her body was trembling like crazy, tail down, head down, whimpering. She seemed apologetic, as if she’d done something really bad. Andrew jumped off his bike and bent down and said something to her and finally it clicked. She started licking him through his helmet! Andrew was bawling. Then she saw Ingrid and I and gave us lots of kisses too. Surprisingly, I didn’t cry. I think I was all cried out at that point. She recognized the vanagon and promptly jumped into the back seat; that made everyone laugh. She was done, she was ready to go home.
She looked awful. You can see every bone in her spine. She looks oddly young again, with big paws and a big head. Her underside and the insides of her ears were flaming pink. It looked as if something had scratched her from head to foot. Her pads were sensitive, she could barely stand to walk in gravel. Her eyes looked the worst- swollen and dull, possibly irritated from all that fine dirt.
According to the vet who examined her last night, she is in fairly good condition. Only a little dehydrated, but it’s apparent that she did find a water source somehow. Not enough food though. It might have been difficult for her to catch anything. The animals that live in this desert have adapted very well to their environment, and clearly had the advantage over Ginger. I believe the whole reason she took off was to chase a jack rabbit, but I doubt she actually caught one. Those puppies can run up to 40 miles an hour, changing direction erratically to throw off their predators. Fortunately, this year the weather has been “cold”, only in the 80s; one of the men at the campsite told us last year it was much hotter than this, in April! The region we’re in is part of the Great Basin desert, the only cold desert in North America. It’s called cold because it lies at a higher elevation, mostly over 4000 feet.
The vet said her body is covered with gnat bites, that’s why it’s irritated. Those will heal easily on their own. He said take it easy with food, only small frequent meals. Uh, too late… the men who found her had already fed her six hotdogs before we arrived.
After we left the vet we noticed Ginger looked much much better already. She has been recovering well. Last night she chose to sleep on the couch instead of her bed. She’ll probably sleep the whole day.
Otto has been quiet during Ginger’s absence. I heard him whimper to himself a few times. Mostly he seemed lost. He and Ingrid have been spending more time together. He’s been antsy to get out. At first I thought he wanted to help find Ginger, but eventually I figured out that he just wanted to go chase jack rabbits, really really badly. Those jack rabbits have a spell over my dogs. Otto could not even remember to pee when I took him out, he was focused on looking for rabbits. When Ginger came home Otto tried to give her the sniff down but she wasn’t having any of it. She went straight to her bed (but giving the food bowl a sniff on her way). He was definitely excited to see her. His little tail was going crazy!
Today, I have the joyous task of taking down posters. No sarcasm, I really am excited to do this!
