Nervous breakdown

Dear Lord. If I don't have a myocardial infarction right this minute, I might never have one.

Our loveseat and sofa both have a recliner on each end. Mini saw the recliner opened up numerous times when I first came home from the hospital, and never once investigated the inner workings of the loveseat.

Tonight, Mark had his feet up, and unseen by him or me, Mini decided to get right into the innards of the loveseat.

Mark had already gone upstairs to go to bed when I heard the dog crying from... somewhere in the general direction of the loveseat.

I still don't know how she did it, but she got allll the way between the fabric that comprises the side of the loveseat, and wedged her head through a small gap between a metal bar and the wooden frame of the sofa itself.

I'd called for Mark's assistance in getting her out, but once we realized that we couldn't lift the loveseat off the floor without risking strangling the dog, there wasn't much he could do. Mine were the only hands small enough to actually get into minimal open area so I could determine the dog's predicament by relying on the sense of touch.

Poor Mini was crying, a sound that's distressingly similar to a newborn baby's voice. Then at first when the Scary Hand appeared in front of her face, she tried to bite it. But a moment later, she realized it wasn't a Scary Hand, it was Mom's hand, and alternated between licking my hand and crying.

I finally did the only thing I COULD do to get the dog out. I cut into the fabric on the side of the recliner. It's the side that faces away from the foot traffic anyway, so the repair job I'm going to do on it won't be too dreadful to behold.

Once I did that, I was able to straighten Mini out and align her body with the direction her head was facing. Then it just became a matter of carefully extracting her. This was easier said than done, as she'd gotten not only her head, but her ears past the point where the logjam occurred, and her ears were not wanting to cooperate when I tried to maneuver her back in the other direction.

But I was persistent, and careful, and eventually I was rewarded with a safely extracted Mini in my hands, wagging her tail.

Because I'm Italian, and there is no problem so big that it can't be resolved by applying food, I proceeded to the kitchen and gave Mini a scoop of dog food, though this isn't normally a time of day she'd be eating.

I then took the piece of chocolate fudge that I'd been saving for emergency purposes and ate it. When Mini saw me eat, she started eating her food, too. As long as I ate, she ate. But I ran out of food before she did, so there's still some dog food in the kitchen.

Mini, meanwhile, has been checked over and there's no outward sign of damage, nor any indication of soreness when I touch her anywhere. Still, just to be safe, I dug out one of the anti-inflammatories left over from her neck pain episode last October, and gave it to her. She might not hurt yet, but that's a pre-emptive strike against soreness that might appear later.

She's now parked by my side on the couch as I type. She just gave a biiiig sigh of content. If my own hands weren't scratched and scraped from grappling around under the loveseat, and if I wasn't sitting here trying to unwind from the Adrenaline Dump of the ages, I might not even know anything significant had transpired.

If I've said it once, I've said it a zillion times: pets don't need nine lives as much as pet PARENTS do. Mark threw his shoulder out while trying to move the loveseat, and my heart attack is having a nervous breakdown.

Tomorrow I'll figure out what to do with sewing the fabric back up.