Zeus Recovering Nicely

From the DHM: The Equuschick posted here about Zeus' encounter with a moving vehicle. Here's a picture that shows how remarkably he's recovering.

When I was about 13 years old, we had a little dog that was my constant companion. He followed me everywhere. He slept with me. I was his favorite person. One day he followed me across the street and got hit by a hit and run driver. My dog leaped up yelping and ran half a block home. I followed as quickly as I could, heart in my mouth. G-pa drove the dog and I to the vet immediately, but Curly died in my lap before we got there, coughing up blood. It was one of the most heartbreaking experiences of a not terribly happy childhood. STill brings a lump to my throat.

So Tuesday we went on a field trip with some homeschooling friends who have three children. We had all just gotten back to our house and were unloading the van (we'd had a picnic lunch, too). When somebody in a hurry to get to the bathroom first opened the front door, the dogs both burst out and went racing for the round pen. Sadie (our grumpy old dog) loves to chase the horse round and round the pen. Zeus only does this if Sadie starts it because, as the Equuschick says, he has no resistance to peer pressure. It was pretty chaotic for a few minutes. There were five or six younger children running around the yard squealing with joy at being out of the van, looking for eggs, chasing each other, the dogs barking, the horse running, and a stream of teens and adults carrying things from the van to the house. I had an armload of picnic stuff, and I was hollering at the dogs to leave the horse alone and get back in the house. Sadie doesn't listen to anything, but Zeus will generally behave if you get his attention and tell him to 'leave it.'
A red blazer drove by, and without any warning or even a check in her speed, Sadie went from chasing the horse around to running after the car. The driver tried to slow down and avoid her, but I couldn't see how she was going to avoid getting hit, so I was screaming at her while praying silently, when out of the corner of my eye I saw Zeus zooming up from behind. Before I could switch from calling Sadie to telling Zeus to 'leave it,' Sadie dodged and Zeus ran headfirst into the back side of the blazer. Typing that out, I wonder if Sadie was trying to kill him, but I don't think she's that smart.
I could hear the crash between his head and the blazer. It took me right back to that night in the eight grade when Curly died. I felt sick. I said something intelligent like "Oh, oh, oh." Zeus rolled over in the road two or three times, then he jumped up unsteadily, and loped unevenly back to the house. The driver of the blazer stopped and looked back, but the dogs looked okay, so he drove on. It wasn't his fault. There was no way he could have avoided the dog.
I followed Zeus into the house, thinking sickly of how miserable we were all going to be without him. I did not think he was going to be okay. Inside, he was panting hard, and occasionally breathing funny- sort of like a hacking cough that he couldn't quite get out. He had a nasty gash above his eye, but no other mark we could see. I told the girls they had to take him to a vet, and Equuschick called our favorite vet in town, and she and the Head Girl drove there together. By that time, Zeus was unable to stand, so we made stretcher out of a blanket and carried him out to the car. I do not think we had been home from the field trip for five minutes.
I felt bad for not going with them to the vet, but there were several reasons, not the least of which was that I was a coward. But we couldn't have gotten him into our van (it's too high), and I can't drive the car, and the Equuschick needed to be holding her dog instead of driving, and I thought the younger children needed me more than the grown up offspring. Since the Head Girl had to do the driving, if I went, that meant all the grownups in the family would gone, leaving the teens and under home worrying, and I wanted to be with them when we got the call that Zeus didn't make it (and I was sure he was not going to be coming home).
I think I was pretty calm about it all up to that point, other than being rather forceful about taking him to the vet (this was an indication that I wasn't calm because nobody was saying that he didn't need to go. I was being insistent in the face of total agreement). But as soon as I shut the door behind them, I burst into tears and rearranged a bookshelf (I clean more when I'm upset. Yeah, my house is messy). My friend asked me if it would be better if she stayed or went home, and I said I didn't know, and something in my tone told her it would be better if she stayed. I'm glad she did. I know we were all praying quietly through the afternoon until we got the phone call, but it was nice to have another grown up around to keep my mind off things. Our older teens at home say I told all sorts of terrible stories about people and dogs who were in accidents, got up and acted fine for a minute, and then died or never walked again. I thought I only told one or two stories, and my intention was merely to prepare them for the possiblity that things wouldn't be okay. So I'm probably not the best choice of companion for hospital waiting rooms.

Of course, as most of you know, the vet said Zeus was fine. No broken bones, no internal injuries. Probably he'd hit his doggy funny bone really hard and gotten some temporary nerve damage when he hit the road. We don't have carpet, just wood floors, and this big (85 pounds, he can stand up and put his front paws on the Headmaster's shoulders), smart, but clumsy dog sometimes has trouble keeping his balance on the floors anyway, so that's why he couldn't support himself on three legs. He was walking fine just an hour later, limping slightly.
He wasn't limping at all the next day. His eyebrow got really, really swollen, and he did look a lot like Rocky from the first movie, but as you see from the above picture, he's just fine now. He was pretty depressed for about 36 hours- just flopped on the floor, looking sorry for himself. We hope he was ashamed, too.
We're all very happy about his recovery, and we really, really hope that he's learned that Sadie is not a good influence and he should not do something just because she does. We've repeated the standing admonitions to the small children about not letting the dogs out.
Zeus hit the hotwire around our pasture one time, and he's refused to go near it ever since. He's a quick learner, so we're hoping he's learned a healthy respect for moving vehicles. But we'll have to keep an eye on Sadie, in case she tries another method of eliminating her dog rival.