draft #2: in which the dog causes herself trauma

The dog tried to kill herself again tonight.

Let's back up.

This coming Tuesday, I'll be heading out once again for the general Prescott, AZ-area for our two-week summer field school. I will, as per usual, be spending my time battling mountain lion and gnats, camping excessively, and collecting (with the proper notes and all) trash left lying around by the native folks a thousand years ago. But this year I'll be doing all those things and then going happily and cozily to sleep in my new, very-own 6-person Coleman something-or-other-model tent which my Guatemalan bought for me today. If you've ever camped, you may already know that "6-person tent" doesn't mean that it's large enough for six actual people. It's not like a hotel room or anything. Although spacious, it's actually just perfect for my needs and I can't stop glowing.

We've spent the last few hours rationalizing this tent, which, while also much cheaper than it sounds, was not as cheap as, say, a box of tissues. Our main point of rationalization is that we can use it to go camping with Lila who is of the opinion that sleeping on an air mattress in the back of my truck (our usual M.O.) is in the same category as bunking down with Al Quaeda. She appears to find the whole situation horrific and attempts to leap out the back at every opportunity which is distressing when it's, say, three in the morning and you're trying to push up the back window and climb out to go to the bathroom while not waking up the other member of your party or the rest of everybody at the campgrounds. A 63-pound dog launching herself of off whoever's forehead is most convenient towards the escape route isn't exactly conducive to covert early-morning bathroom-related activity, as you might guess if you have any camping experience at all.

A good-sized tent, we reasoned, would be worth it because we could put out a blanket for the dog and the air mattress for us and we'd all sleep like bugs in a rug and it would be super-awesome and none of us would get eaten by bears at all probably.

To test out our hypothesis, I set up my new tent under the ramada this afternoon and encouraged Lila to wander around inside. It went well. So we all three of us got inside and zipped up the door and unzipped the windows (just like we were really camping!) and Lila pawed around, sniffing curiously at the windows, for a bit and then allofasudden made a leap for the window in the door panel, crashing against it so that the entire tent seeemed to go over on its side and I spilled some of my wine (just like we were really camping!) and then stood back and shook her ears out in bewilderment. You could practically hear her say, "What the hey!?"

So apparently our dog never doesn't have issues with anything. She's like a fifteen-year-old. Everything she does has to be emotionally traumatic and awkwardly executed.