Did-Shadow-Eat-Turkey-Bones Drama/Trauma Appears Over

November 25, 2023

Note the caveat, “appears.” Not quite 48 hours yet. See below. 

Post-Thanksgiving Vigil, i.e., reverberating drama/trauma, over. SO OVER! I watched 15-year-old puppy Shadow closely all yesterday, with periodic checks on Kona as well. No signs of any kind of suffering or weirdness in either of them. This morning, to me, the clincher: on our daily 3-4 mile walk, Shadow dropped . . . not one, but two large poops, with no blood and nary a sliver of bone in either one.

More and more, we surmise that yes, a raccoon did get up on the back porch, ripped the roaster top off, dropped it nearby, and hauled away the entire turkey carcass except for that thigh bone that entered the house in Shadow’s mouth.

Late yesterday afternoon, son Sean called with grandkids Kiera (23) and Drew (21) visiting him in Colorado. Except for them telling me they went  for supermarket sushi on Thanksgiving day, the Shadow drama was just about all we talked about. Sean told me that he actually saw his dog Lily eat chicken bones one time, and immediately took her to an emergency vet, who took an X-ray and made her vomit. When he got home, within minutes the dog ate more chicken bones! So Sean turned right around and went back to the vet, who laughed when he saw them coming. Same protocol, the second time.

Kiera said she thinks hydrogen peroxide can be used to encourage vomiting, but she’s not sure. Need to look it up.

Then Sean said — of course, as is his wont (he was a coder for IBM until retiring two years ago) — let’s see what chatgtp says . . .

Well, the very first piece of AI advice was “Slow down, don’t panic.”

And the second piece of advice?  “Don’t induce vomiting.” Instead, it said to go to the vet and get an X-ray, etc. Just what Sean told me he did. I didn’t even think of doing that! Probably because I personally so rarely even think about, much less rely on western medicine, of which vet medicine is a subset.

Now I felt doubly guilty.  Now, not only did I absent-mindedly cause this entire drama, but I am avoiding what most people would do to deal with it!

Geez! “What time is it?” I ask myself. “Oops. It’s already 4:45 PM, and if my vet office is open, it will close in 15 minutes!!!” I could have called the vet, but was too restless to do so. Figuring I had just enough time to get Shadow in the car and drive there and speak to a vet in person, I hurriedly said goodbye to my advisors in Colorado and rushed out to drive east on 3rd street, about a mile to Smith Road, careened left around that corner, drove another 300 feet . . . to discover an utterly empty parking lot.

Okay. Now what?

By this time, my panic was beginning to subside. Just getting in the car and trying to do something had eased my doubly guilty conscience.

Drove home, searched internet for “emergency vet in or near Bloomington IN,” knowing that such an office has actually been established this year, to animal lovers’ relief. We no longer have to drive all the way to Indianapolis with a pet emergency in the car. Found the website. Left a written message. There’s no way to call them directly, though they asked for both my phone number and email. For the rest of the day I carried my phone around with me, and kept looking on email, but . . . no response of either kind.

By this time my panic had almost completely subsided. Chatgtp had counseled to watch out for “24 to 48 hours.” I figured if Shadow could get through 24 hours with no symptoms of any kind, we’re likely home free.

That happened.

Then this morning, the final test: would he poop on our usual morning walk? Would he be able to poop? If so, would there be something strange in the poop? As I said above, he passed the test.

What strikes me about this short, scary adventure is just how unbalanced I became when attempting to deal with the possibility that my dog might have swallowed bones, or bone slivers. Which reminds me of what else happened this morning:

I decided to check out Bloomington’s Christmas market for local arts and crafts. At one point saw a very familiar profile, but with a hat that covered most of his head. Who is it? Ah yes, it’s a young man who used to live here in Green Acres Permaculture Village, but just a few months ago moved into a new 12-person co-op, extremely cheap living, where everybody has their own (tiny) room and they decide on, purchase, make, and eat all meals together. Much more collectivist than this place, which focuses on continuous dynamic balancing of the opposites: individualism and community.

He responded, wistfully: “Oh, it’s okay . . . But they seem preoccupied with geopolitical concerns a lot more than other people.” I chimed in: “That’s because young people in your generation are not rooted in. And I don’t blame them! How could they be rooted in [when nobody that age is done with college loans or can afford to buy a home, start a family]? I didn’t mention what I bracketed here, but knew I could assume with him, a bright light in his generation, that he knew what I was thinking. So I just said, “The result is that they remain rootless and unbalanced. So the antidote is to ground yourself, center yourself, come into balance. Maybe you can help them do the same?”

He nodded his head, serious, considering. Yes.

Internally I also nodded my head. Yes, me too, I thought to myself. Despite being in the now fading generation where owning one’s own home was expected, so rooted in that way, my actual corporeal self goes out of balance way too easily, like with yesterday’s “did Shadow eat bones?” drama.

Okay Ann. Ground, center, balance! Your two hours of “physical culture” daily are absolutely essential if you wish to maintain your own well-being, and radiate serenity into our increasingly troubled world.

Morning walk done; time for afternoon yoga, chikung, taichi!

My Post-Thanksgiving Vigil . . .

November 24, 2023

For the first time in many many years, I hosted a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner, inviting all and sundry on my mail list who had nowhere else to go. Nine people total. We had a wonderful time. And all I had to supply was the turkey, which, astonishingly enough, I roasted to perfection, its moist meat falling off the bones.

I decided to do this in lieu of my usual Thanksgiving ritual, which, for years, ever since my son  moved to Bloomington (when? 12 years ago?) was for the two of us to go out to dinner. Colin however, since August 16, has been slowly recovering from an aortic dissection that should have killed him and instead left him paraplegic and wracked, at this point, with nerve pain. (See his site on caringbridge.org where I post daily updates).

I decided to host a traditional Thanksgiving meal (and set up a long table dressed in white, with red poinsetta and cloth napkins) because I felt impelled to do so, as one hyper-local way of helping to center, ground, and balance this sorry world that is fast devolving into chaos.

And as I said, all went well, including spirited conversations among us and all the traditional sides, including a fabulous pumpkin pie made by a 13-year-old young man who “loves to bake!”

All went well until, that is, later in the evening, when I decided to set the covered roasting pan with the remains of the turkey carcass bones on the  back porch overnight, where it would remain cold enough to be used today, for turkey bone broth. (Why didn’t I set it out on the screened-in front porch table, where I usually set things to stay cold overnight. Why? WHY?)

That was the plan.

Sometime after I set the roaster out there I let puppy Shadow out to pee, as I always do before we go to bed. An hour later, I realized he still wasn’t back. Where was he? Before I could get really concerned he barked at his usual place, outside on that same back porch, to come in.

And when he came in he had a turkey thigh leg bone in his mouth, looking mighty proud of himself. Immediately, I yelled, “NO, you can’t have that!” and despite knowing he might automatically bite, I fiercely yanked it from his mouth.

Hmmm . . . why did not bite, or at least growl? (Now I know. He was probably already full . . .) This question flitted through me briefly, but was pushed aside by judgmental self castigation: who in their right mind would leave turkey bones out for a dog to get? Everybody knows chicken and turkey bones are NOT to be given to dogs to chew on, in case they crack open, and the dog swallows them.

Note: I did not, not for even one second, see the covered roaster outside as having been invaded by Shadow . . .

Okay, skip to this morning, just prior to my walk with puppy Shadow, when I suddenly asked myself: “Ommigod. Did Shadow get into the turkey roaster?”

And what I saw, when we both stepped outside, was the cover, BY ITSELF . . .

. . . and, five feet away, the pan, with NOTHING IN IT! Licked clean.

I repeat. THAT ROASTER HELD ALL THE BONES FOR A 13-POUND TURKEY.

Geez, did I feel like a fool. And now what? Will he be okay? I looked around the yard and found absolutely no trace of the carcass. How could he have eaten all those bones? Might Kona (Colin’s big dog, who lives next door, and has a dog door to go in and out at will) have knocked the cover off? We all figure Shadow would NOT have done that. If they were both out there eating bones, then they must have done it one at a time, because in the presence of food, Shadow snarls and barks to keep Kona away. I would have heard that ruckus.

Might a raccoon have knocked the cover off, and perhaps eaten at least some of the bones?

So far, there have been no signs of trouble in the digestive system of either dog. But, and this is weird: Shadow spit out a tiny piece of bone this morning. Otherwise, he’s eating, walking, drinking, lying around, and pooping normally — so far.

Don’t know how long to continue this post-Thanksgiving vigil, but it does have me on edge.

So typical, these strange days. Wonderful experiences, followed by horrific mistakes that go unnoticed at the time, all due to absent-mindedness (transit Saturn in Pisces). Several near-car accidents, for me, so far, during this extended fraught period when transit Saturn squares my accident-prone Mars/Uranus opposition, and with transit Mars now beginning to conjunct my natal Mars in Sagittarius, thus amping up the Saturn/Mars/Uranus configuration, I attempt to maintain my center, ground and balance myself, while glancing continuously and worriedly over to little Shadow, to see if he’s still okay.