Dog Run Revelations

          I was 32 when I realized I had been unwittingly absorbed into the cult of animal rescue and officially become a crazy dog lady.  I used to roll my eyes and shake my head whenever my aunt would mention transporting dozens of dogs to rescues hundreds of miles away for peanuts.  Don’t get me wrong, I love animals in general, but the animal rescue crowd are a whole other breed.  I didn’t think much of it when she asked me to ride along with her on a transport to Oshkosh, Wisconsin.  It was roughly a thousand mile round trip, and being poor as we so often find ourselves to be, why waste money on a hotel when you can do the 24 hour trip in shifts – long, manic, soul crushing shifts?  I had nothing better to do, besides my college homework. I’d never been to Wisconsin, so I thought, what the hell?  Thus began my career as a crazy dog person.

            That first run was grueling.  It was January and the weather wasn’t exactly ideal.  The first three or four hours consisted of navigating through a constant torrential downpour.  The skies had cleared and I breathed a sigh of relief that my turn at the wheel might be uneventful.  But of course, it wasn’t uneventful at all.  We hit the expressway in Chicago and the snow and ice started – this did not deter all the rabid motorists around us from driving 75 mph at 4am in a blizzard - and of course that’s when I realized that we were nearly out of gas and all the goddamned gas stations were on the opposite side.  This led to an hour or so of our time spent wandering around the streets of Chicago trying to find a gas station – you’d think this would be fairly easy in a place like Chicago – and you’d be wrong.  At one point, I’m pretty sure I heard the music from The Twilight Zone as we passed the same string of car dealerships for the second or third time. 

            I should probably pause here to give you a little background.  I have been my Aunt Lori’s sidekick for as long as I can remember.  Being only 11 years my senior, she’s always been more like an older sister than an Aunt.  We’ve had our fair share of adventures (and misadventures) over the years and we nearly always find ourselves lost in some godforsaken place at least once per trip.  It’s kind of our thing – also, I’m convinced that there’s some cruel super nerd working for Google maps who waits for us to get within 20 miles of our destination and then wipes said location from all known maps so that he/she can watch us wander aimlessly around the middle of nowhere trying to find our way back to civilization.  That’s right – I’m on to you, super nerd.

            So anyway, it took us about 7 hours to make it from just outside Indianapolis to Oshkosh.  We arrived at the rescue exhausted, frazzled, and bleary eyed to unload our twenty plus dogs and two cats to our much too chipper rescue guy – who proceeded to enthusiastically unload them wearing nothing more than a t-shirt and shorts in subzero temperatures.  After no more than a half hour or forty five minutes, we were back on the road and in desperate search of breakfast and a longer break from driving.  Cracker Barrel is both a blessing and a curse to the road weary traveler.  You can nearly always depend on reasonably fast service, no matter how ungodly busy they are and they serve real food.  Which is why you end up stuffing your face and realizing you’ve made a potentially fatal error once you’re back on the road and find yourself fighting against post pig out lethargy.

            How we made it back alive, I’ll never know, perhaps we’re charmed.  My friends – the normal ones who don’t spend what little spare time they have risking life and limb to relocate mangy mutts – think we’re insane. They just might be right…