Travels With Car Sick Choppy

Warning: This post is very much concerned with fluids exiting Choppy. If you’d rather not hear about this, I’d stop reading right about now. Go read the previous post about drinking. Far less disgusting.

Choppy is usually a joy in the car. She sits in the passenger seat up front, happy and content.

There are, of course, exceptions to this rule.

The day I brought her home from the Humane Society, Choppy got in the car and promptly peed on the front seat. And so, even before we left the parking lot of the Humane Society, I was cleaning up after her. It remains the one and only time she has peed in the car.

Similarly, she has only had one pooping accident in the car. This happened after the long drive from Terre Haute, where I live, to my parents’ house in Wisconsin. My friends, Kaylan and Travis, were in the car, coming up to spend a weekend in vacation-land. We were almost within sight of my parents’ house when Choppy had this accident. On reason I know they are good friends? Because they are still my friends, even after this horribly disgusting thing happened. Note: I do not suggest you try pooping in the car to test your friendships. But if it accidentally happens, well, let it be a test.

All that said? Choppy does, on occasion, get car sick. I am always surprised when it happens, but it has happened enough that I don’t remember individual times that it has happened. I always feel bad for her, as I have had more than a few issues with car sickness over my lifetime. I still can’t read in the car if I am a passenger without getting sick (I plead the fifth on the effects of reading while driving, without admitting that I have ever actually read while driving).

That said? I’m guessing I am going to remember the bout with car sickness that Choppy had yesterday.

Somewhere after getting out of the Smoky Mountains and crossing the Appalachian Trail on I-40, I was looking for a good place to stop for gas. As I was pulling into the gas station, from the seat next to me, I heard the unmistakable sound of a dog about to puke (sort of like a cat with a hairball, but less hacking, and more imminent liquid dispersal). Unfortunately, I didn’t get stopped before it happened. Twice. And again after I stopped and was about to open the door of the car to let Choppy out.

Choppy walked around the gas station a bit, and I cleaned up her seat (and Choppy) while she got some fresh air. It was…not pleasant.

The face of a dog who has just been car sick.

Then, I got back on the road. Somewhere, shortly after getting back on the Interstate, I happened to glance at myself in the rearview mirror (OK, I was checking out my makeup, not just glancing at myself). There, on my forehead, were several splashes of yellow that were definitely not part of the makeup I had applied in the morning.

Yes, Choppy’s barf and splashed up and hit me in the forehead at some point during her multiple bouts with sickness.

Immediately, driving at a speed within what I personally view as the margin of error of a radar gun, I started freaking out and frantically wiping at my forehead. And shrieking. Quite possibly, swerving across the two narrow lanes of mountainous roads, though, to be honest, I was paying absolutely no attention to traffic at this point.

Note: this is when my friends with children start laughing at me for freaking out about a little puke on the face. I’m sure this would be classified as a minor incident in the raising of a child.

After getting a fair bit of puke off of my face, I calmed down enough to realize that this situation, as horrifying as it was in the immediacy of the moment of realizing what had happened, was really not so bad. If anything, it was sort of funny. I mean, I’m not going to die from a little puke. And besides, if this had happened to someone else, I would be laughing at it.

And so, I stopped wiping at the puke, got out the phone, and took some pictures to share with you of the forehead puke. And so, without further ado, Sarah modeling forehead puke (and yes, Choppy is OK. She just needed to get out of the car for a bit, and she was just fine the rest of our ride yesterday afternoon).

Making a funny face while showing off the dog puke on your face is definitely required.