Which lasted all of three minutes the amount of time it took for a noisy truck to come down the street. Immediately Elliot jerked and jumped up, but I was able to grab the handle of his retractable leash and rein him in. Back down he went next to me, and why at that point I didn't pop the switch to hold the leash in place is something I shall forever regret. Instead I would lean over and take his collar in my hand each time a bus, a truck, or people came down the street. It was all good for about forty five minutes. Just a woman and her dog in the shade.
I was looking through Instagram when a truck pulling a huge boat came driving past the house. Like a shot Elliot was up and on the move. I went to grab the leash, but instead got the leash as it was spinning out of the handle instead of the handle itself hooked to my chair. I tried to stop the retracting, but it just zipped through my hand as he ran toward the moving vehicles. Suddenly pain registered in my head sort of like this: OUCH! OUCH! OUCH! I've read enough articles about the dangers of retractable leashes to know to let go. Despite the thought that I could be sending my dog to his death by vehicular dogslaughter. I let go.
I jumped out of my chair as fast as Elliot had jumped up to chase the truck/boat. The entire time I was screaming NO, ELLIOT, NO at the top of my lungs. The driver of the truck must have heard me. He stopped. Elliot by now was at his boat's wheels barking and chasing, but when the truck stopped Elliot took that to mean the vehicles had surrendered and so he stopped. I marched toward the dog thankful he was till alive and undamaged. The driver slowly pulled off and away. Elliot stood still watching me advance realizing his moment of freedom and power had cost him. As I reached down to grab the leash, shouting and screaming at the dog, pain in my right hand and fingers registered. I looked down to find several blisters forming quickly on each of my fingers, the worst on my index finger. The pain was suddenly intolerable.
I marched back to the house with the dog following behind me. I would like to say with his tail between his legs, but he must have felt all was well. He trotted behind me through the yards and into the house where he looked for a treat. The entire time I was ranting and raving and still yelling NO, but small sobs were coming out too. I got into the house and examined my hand. Each finger had marks and blisters. The index finger looked like a worm had attached itself to it.
I washed the hand quickly and put ice on it. By now I was moaning and crying. I couldn't stop. The pain was horrific, and I have a high threshold for pain. I was pacing back and forth in my kitchen and the dog thought this a game. He went to jump on me and I lost it. I shrieked like a woman who had totally lost all control, which I was. He jumped as if I had hit him with an electric shock, looked up at me, and thought, "Holy, shit, I've really done it this time." and he slunk out of the kitchen.
I ended up lying down in the bedroom pressing the ice pack to my hand. An hour later the pain was still horrific. I was still moaning and crying. I could not take the ice off of my hand without the pain kicking in with a vengeance. I knew I needed to do something so I did what I always do. I Googled it. I looked up wounds from a retractable dog leash. The consensus was all the same. Put aloe on it.
I have an aloe plant started from a shoot my mother gave me some twenty five years ago. Recently my husband took it out of its pot and planted it in our front yard. I watched a YouTube video on how to cut an aloe plant, took a segregated knife outside, and followed the directions all with my left hand, my right one still wrapped in ice. The pitiful sobs were still coming out of me, but I managed to slice one of the stems and slather aloe all over my wounds. It did help in pain relief.
My first attempt at wrapping the burns didn't work so well. It worked enough for the aloe to do its magic and then I took a shower washing the hand very carefully. By now Darcy was home and I enlisted her help. Finding unexpired antibiotic cream was not so easy. Every tube we had was one or two years old. I finally gave up on that and used medical supplies leftover from my mother (I have an entire bin of the stuff) which included Xeroform, a wound and burn medical gauze.
Elliot avoided me most of the night, and Darcy took over his care. When my husband came home later, way later, that night I showed him my wrapped hand looking for some loving sympathy. Instead, upon hearing that it was a retractable leash burn, he hiked up his pant legs to show me one he too had received recently after getting tangled up in Elliot's. Something tells me we have gone about this dog raising all wrong.
First on the list of purchases we need to make this Saturday, right before Halloween candy, is a new un-retractable leash.
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