Last Night's Adventure

So, on paper, yesterday continued the trend of consistently bad shit this week. However, I can appreciate the novelty of bad things happening and the adventure that ensued last night.

Yesterday I had to work until 5. I can't remember the last time I had to work until 5 on Friday, so that's lame. Went to pick up Rhama from Lori at exit 151 (I think). We put him in his crate and he seemed really timid, not the same Rhama I remember. He threw up in the car. That's okay, he threw up on a blanket. I want to let him out so I take him to the hot tub room, which retrospectively was the only room I could have let him out in, he would have gone nuts and been difficult to grab otherwise. He would not let me within 5 feet of him. I leave him alone for a little while, like 30 minutes, and come back in and he's still really timid. So I just lay down on top of the hot tub and drift in and out of a nap. After that I finally get him to come to me and I pet him a little but he's still really timid, like I could set him off with the wrong movement, I'm being extremely non-threatening to achieve this. I felt like I was breaking a horse (I think that's the term) like Bear Grylls did, he spent like a day trying to get the horse to trust him and then it just ended up running off when he tried to mount it.

So Rhama warmed up to me a little bit by the end, but that's not saying much, he was still scared of me. Talked to Rayna a little on Skype and Rhama wouldn't come out of his crate. Around 10:30 Rayna's mom called so it was time to go, I replaced the puke blanket with an old towel which proved a good idea as most of the puke ended up on that this time. I googled Radisson and it says 17001 Pac Hwy. I get to 170th and Pac Hwy and there's no Radisson, WTF! Ends up being around 182nd or something, bullshit Google even though you were just doing your job, it's someone else's fuck up. Met up with Rayna's mom. She was able to hold Rhama for a while, so I thought everything would be okay. We didn't have a leash so I made a makeshift one out of a bag handle that was in my trunk that made the leash about 2 ft long. We wanted him to go to the bathroom, carry him over in the bag and a minute after we let him out of the bag he starts freaking out trying to get away from Rayna's mom, desperately. He tried twice and kind of gave up and it was a big deal, particularly to Rayna's mom, because, seriously, wtf just happened? Things seemed okay but a few minutes later he freaked out again and got off of his collar. He was running around (it was 11 pm) and after tracking him for about 10 minutes I squated and tried to get him to come to me and he came to me and crawled under me. It was wonderful, he actually came back to me, after all the timid bullshit he trusted me. Rayna's Mom picked him up and, forgive me, I don't remember how he got away again but I think it was a few minutes later.

This time he didn't want to come back to me. I think it was about another hour to hour and a half of following him around, trying to catch him. He would run to the other side of the hotel and I'd have to follow him and once he saw that I followed him he'd run back to the other side, that happened a good 4 or 5 times, kind of annoying. He had a circuit he'd run and the last time he tried it I cut him off and kept him from running all the way to the other side, felt good about that because I had to run fast through these rocks. So we had tried so much, he was tired and would just move from car to car (underneath). We tried flushing him out, never really worked, he's too fast. Brandon tried grabbing him while he was underneath the car, that didnt' work. Eventually Rayna's Mom said I just needed to talk to him until he came to me. He was under a car and I talked to him for at least 15 minutes and he started to come to me. But he stopped, he didn't come all the way. He got to where he was about 2 feet away from me but he would not come out more than just his neck and head from underneath the car. I was able to put my hand up to his nose but I doubt anything else would have flied. After about 5 minutes of that I came to the conclusion that even if he does come to me, I'm going to have to pick him up and he'll probably freak out at that point so I might was well just catch him now, I'm going to get bitten but I know Rayna would be devastated if we lost her dog and this was the only way to prevent it. So at one point when he got within about 2 feet of me I just hooked my left arm around him, grabbed his shirt and grabbed his other side with my right hand. He got me pretty good on my left hand, I don't know how because his shirt was over his head the entire time. I had a good holf of him but he was stiff as a rock and standing up in the wheel well, which was not as wide as his body (kind of wedged in there), so I wasn't sure how we were going to get him out. I got Brandon to help me and he saw that I could push him back a little bit where there wasn't this downhump on the wheelwell that his back was stuck on. So I was able to drag him out like that. That dog is what 15-20 lbs? It's so incredibly strong for that weight, there was no way I was going to make him hunch down to get out of the wheel well without breaking his bones. I hope he's okay and I hope Rayna's parents can bring him back, I think they can though. He was acting happy with Lori, so I know it's not gone, he just needs to get used to everyone again.

So, yeah, got home around 1:30 or so. My night would have been really boring anyways, so I'm not upset that's how it turned out. Now for today to pull me through this bad luck streak...