A Changed Dog........Key.

If any of you remember any of the discussions I had about Key barking at everything, big or small, alive or not, moving or just standing still, all the way to Alaska and back......then this story is as hard to believe as Key's survival after taking a nose dive out of our motor home at about 60 mph on the Sam Houston Toll Road in Houston, Texas last month. What a sick feeling we had and the feeling of helplessness was more than I could stand. We literally cried all the way back to Fort Worth thinking of what had happened. The belief that he was dead, but not able to find him made it all the worse. If things had not turned out the way they did, it would have been really hard to enjoy RV-ing the way we have without him being along with us.. Linda even expressed that it would have been a chore to her to even go any where in the motor home without him after what had happened.


So, when we decided to run back down to Kemah last weekend, I was curious to see what reaction Key would have to climbing on board the motor home and moving down the road. Would he pull back and refuse to get on board or what? When we got to the motor home and finished getting it loaded we grabbed the dogs and they just went right up to the stairs and jumped in like nothing had happened. So far, so good. Soon we were out on the road and although I had not heard a peep out of either dog, that really wasn't a test because we hadn't passed anything that usually sparks a aggressive barking with paws on the window sill.


Within several minutes we were out on the highway and I could see the first open field coming up with cattle in it. I made a mental note that all the windows had been checked, again and prepared for the barking to begin. As we passed the cattle, we heard....nothing. Nothing! Not one peep. I looked around and there was Key, sitting in the dinette seat looking squarely out of the window, directly at the cows. Linda and I looked at each other, like "did that really happen?" With my eyes on the road I asked "What's he doing now?" Linda said he just laid down. Wow, that knock in the head must have been pretty hard. And that's the way it was all the way to Kemah and the same back home. Neither dog barked at anything while we were in the motor home. In fact they slept almost all the way down there and home too.


When we got back from Kemah, Linda took Key into the vet for his check-up and to see how an ear infection he had been treated for before all of this happened, was doing. It was fine but the vet discovered a chipped (it has a hole in it) Canine tooth which is going to require either an extraction or a root canal. Without one or the other, there is about a 50/50 chance it will become abscessed. That can be dangerous in dogs (humans too).


Friday, he has an appointment with a specialist that will determine what treatment will be best. Personally, I am leaning toward the root canal. Mainly because the recovery time is only a couple of days and the extraction will take longer to heal. The root canal cost almost twice as much as the extraction but we really don't have the time to do an extraction because we leave for Albuquerque in 12 days. When Linda and I were talking this over today, considering the cost, we both said "We don't have a choice" both at the same time. At least we're both on the same page on this.


The vet and her staff checked him over and could not find anything else wrong with him, except he had lost a couple of lbs since he was last weighed (that was just a couple of days before we left for Kemah the first time). The vet said don't count your chickens before they're hatched on the "no barking thing". According to her he just may not be in his comfort zone in the motor home yet. Maybe...but he slept almost all the time we were moving....seemed pretty comfortable to me. Also the way the tooth broke and the cut on his tongue indicates a hard blow to the mouth, so he may have been unconscious for a period of time.
So, that's where we are right now. Well know more on what will happen after Key gets to see a specialist. He is a pretty special dog, isn't he.