The Dog Barf

I woke up to the hum of a street sweeper, but it wasn’t a bad night staying in the city park by the flooded river in Douglas, WY. The dog and I slowly got up, and I was determined to go swimming today. I checked by the pool though and they didn’t open until noon, so we went on a few river paths, and visited a veteran memorial. I decided to go to the library to get caught up on a lot of work and my blog. I never can spend much time in the library now because I’m worried about leaving Ayla in the car.

I parked in the shade and rolled her window down the whole way and cracked the other a few inches. I wasn’t gone too long when I came back to check on her…she was in the back seat. I knew something was up and let her out of the car and could smell throw up. I chose to ignore the smell for the moment as we went on a long walk around the city, she was certainly sick again, and I was heartbroken for her. I tied her in the shade and took out my makeup remover wipes to deal with the throw up all over the front two seats. It could have been a lot worse if it wasn’t made up mostly of the Iams dry food that I gave her the night before. My car smelled like throw up though, I needed to shampoo my seats. She looked at me with sad sick eyes and I wished I had a house that I could leave her at until she felt better.

The chamber of commerce told me to go to the Ford dealership, which was the only place I could get my seat shampooed in town. It was too expensive though for a broke biologist, $50. I can still remember when money wasn’t an issue a few months ago at my past corporate job, but somehow I seem a lot happier in Wyoming. A sales man got a hold of me, which led me to ask I could trade my Nissan Versa for a 2003 Chevy Silverado truck. He started up the paperwork, and said he would call back in a few days if they found a lender willing to give me a loan. He was the nicest sales man ever, and didn’t even cringe when Ayla threw up water right next to his feet. He talked to me for a long time about the bald eagles down by the river and about how exciting my wildlife job is.

I later drove out to Lusk, WY (somewhere near Kansas) for the night and now have my laptop plugged into an RV hookup. The campground here is not so nice. All the bathrooms were locked and I rang the doorbell hoping the person who owned the car out front from South Dakota would answer, and she did. She doesn’t run the place but rents an apartment above the office. She helped me unlock the bathrooms, and mentioned that the owner was out of town. I was so pissed that I set up my tent on an RV space for the electricity. Trust me, no one will want to fill it, this place is empty.

Ayla is looking so sick and sad, I didn’t even bother tying her up to some pole. She went in my tent for a few minutes then laid down under my feet at the picnic table, where she still is. I keep saying encouraging words to her and her tail wags a little every time. She hardly touched her water, which worries me, I will try some more dry food. The lark buntings are going crazy out in the “prairie” behind me, and coal trains from Gillette keep chugging through headed east at just enough distance to not be annoying. Each open car is filled with the exact same amount of the black energy in a mountainous pile, the one going by now has hundreds of train cars of coal attached, the same amount of energy as a couple of pieces of small uranium that could be held in a gloved hand.