Walking Disaster

Two questions to be addressed here: is the child a sociopath? And is there a greater level of panic than an unforeseen potential death? Yes, and no, respectively. 

Here’s what happened. There’s a family that I frequently babysit, dogsit, drive to and from LAX, and generally do odd jobs for. They are super nice and friendly, and always give me wine and chocolate when I pick them up from their international trips, so I continue to help them. They’re also a family that I have been working within multiple capacities since college, so there’s a level of tenure there for them, their kid, and their dogs. 

First note: dogs matter way more to rich people than their kids. I don’t think they realize this but it’s obvious to the rest of us through their actions. Once, while spending about a week with their ten-year-old and three dogs, I had a page-long list of requirements for the dogs – including how long to walk them and what time to feed them and give them medicine. The kid’s to-do list? School, soccer, keep him alive—end of list. One of the dogs had a more rigorous medicine routine than the others, but there were no other context clues so I stupidly didn’t think anything of it. Until she had a coughing fit on day three. 
She’s a small dog too! And all of a sudden, when I’m trying to herd the child to his room to start getting ready for bed, the dog begins breathing like Tony Soprano and proceeds to cough unbelievably hard for about thirty seconds, stop, and stiffly fall over. 

What. 

WHAT!?

I start freaking out, because who wouldn’t? She didn’t faint, she just fell over like she was already taxidermied. I start calling and texting the parents, trying to feel a pulse even though I don’t know how to do that, and trying to plan for what to do with a dog’s body? Further panic ensues when the kid looks down, says “hmm” and steps over the corpse in the hallway to go brush his teeth. So, this is the time he chooses to not fight me on brushing his teeth? When a death has occurred?? I’m bluescreening, panic spiraling, and trying to think of ways to explain how this is not my fault, and he’s just going to walk over the deceased? 

“Hey, [child] has this happened before?”
“No, but I like [other dog] more anyway.”
“Go to bed.”

We don’t have time to unpack that exchange (verbatim by the way), because the mom is finally calling me back. But the panic returned in full force when her first words were to ask why I don’t know canine CPR. Bitch, who does?

Luckily, she was able to walk me through it enough to calm me down and reassure me that this is something the dog has been dealing with lately, how to treat her and coax her away from the rainbow bridge. Sure enough, about two minutes later the dog just gets up and walks away like they didn’t give me a heart attack. 

For the rest of the week, I was watching the dog to make sure she didn’t die, again, and losing sleep over her every time I felt like she wasn’t breathing enough. But I was just as carefully watching the kid to make sure I never ended up on his list of future victims. When his parents got back they were very surprised that I was as frazzled and tired as I was, as if I hadn’t aged another seven years in less than a week. There are a lot of bad babysitting stories in my locker, but that one might be worse than anything else. This one even tops the time I was tutoring a kid whose parents had sex in their room while I was there. At least then the only thing that died was my dignity.