A Tribute to TORI the EXPLORER: 1997-2012

It was a dark and rainy early morning in Houston in 1999 when Tori came into my life quite by accident. She was approximately 2 years old. After 13 years of adventures together, she left this life at 2:41am as we held her on a dark and rainy Leap Day morning at the age of 15.

Tori was a peace loving, adventure seeking , gentle soul who gave and received love without effort and made everyone smile who had the joy of meeting her. Despite a dislocated patella, diabetes, one eye, blindness and colitis, she was always ready for the next adventure. As soon as it seemed that we were preparing to leave for anywhere other than work, you could find her sitting facing the door, lying on our shoes, or next to the car outside so we would be sure not to forget her.  How did she always know exactly where the car door was when she was blind??

Tori was the most forgiving and patient being I have ever had the pleasure to meet.  Two and a half years ago, Tori nearly died when she lost her eye in a remote area of Canada. She survived that crazy incident like the stubborn girl she always was and in the process developed an incredible bond with Lorrie that can only come out of a shared trauma. They were soul mates.

She has left a hole in our lives that can only be filled with the incredible memories we have of her and the life lessons only she has been able to teach us. I feel so incredibly blessed that she came into my life and that she was willing to spend 13 years claiming me as her Human!

Tori

We slept in a little and got on the road around 11:00am. That was planned… not me futzing around! The drive was uneventful. We got to Eau Claire in about an hour and then had interstate the rest of the way. That was a nice change. Tori did well last night. Lorrie slept on the floor with her while I had Emma Blue in a bed with me and her leash in my hand so I knew when she moved. I know she’s curious about Tori and definitely wants to sniff her out. But we are understandably nervous about them being together. Tori is still eating and drinking well. It’s amazing the comeback she has made. The vet was even a little surprised how well she was bouncing back, especially for her advanced age! The tragedy of this whole situation is that Tori is scheduled to have surgery on her cataracts on Tuesday so that she could see again! And then she loses an eyeball! Figure that one out!

One lesson learned… have a first aid kit readily available while traveling. We have a great first aid kit. But it was packed away in our camping gear. ‘Cause camping is where any kind of emergency might happen, right? Wrong!

Tori

We called around 9:30am and were told that we could pick Tori up to take her home between 11:30am-12:00pm. Wow! We had made it clear that we wanted them to keep her overnight if traveling would be too hard for her right away! But they seemed to think she would be okay and the only thing they would be doing if she stayed is giving her medications. So they felt comfortable with letting her go. So we took her! Gladly! She had a lot more energy! When she smelled us, she got really excited! That was good to see. (= We set her up on Lorrie’s lap… sans cone. We blocked the back so Emma couldn’t come up front to smell. And off we went. We had to cross the border again in Sioux Ste Marie. Emma, again, did very well at the border with her muzzle on. They didn’t even ask for their papers that time. Although he did tell me that my passport is not valid because it’s not signed. Oops! He let me through anyway!

Back in the USA, our main goal was just getting home. Of course, there’s no interstate heading our direction. So we took a very scenic drive along Lake Michigan. Construction and all. Of course. Tori was doing great. Sleeping most of the time. She ate well and drank a lot! Which the vet told us to expect.

We drove all day and much of the night until we stopped at Wausau, WI for the night. It took awhile to find a room as the Wisconsin State Fair was in full swing! We ended up in the Days Inn near Hwy 29. It was great actually! They took pets with a $15 deposit that we would get back in the morning if there was no damage. We’d never gotten that deal before! They also had free wireless and very clean rooms. I gave them 5 stars on my phone navigation!

We left the eyeball in the garbage at Macinac Straight Rest Area. And just to be clear, it was in a garbage bag with other garbage. I’m too squeamish to just be carrying around an eyeball.

Tori

Tori – August 4, 2009

We were able to visit Tori today late morning. She looked SO good! Her eye is sewn shut and she was a little out of it. But she seemed to recognize us. She had a cone, aka Elizabethan Collar, on her head to keep from running into things. But they took that off for our visit. We were only there for about 15-20 minutes. But it was so good to see her awake… and alive!

The rest of the day was spent in the motel. In shock. Crying. Distracting ourselves. Lorrie cleaned out the car a little as there was blood in various places. However, I went out later to get something from the car. And I found the eyeball. Yeah, I know, that’s gross. But it’s real. I couldn’t do anything about it. So I just ran back to the room and told Lorrie. So we stood there trying to figure out who should take care of it. I’d already seen it so it should be me. I didn’t want to do it alone. Lorrie didn’t want us both to have to do it. But she didn’t want to do it. If it hadn’t been so horrible, it would have been a hysterical conversation. We both ended up going out there, but Lorrie did the dirty work. We decided to hold on to it temporarily in case the vet wanted to see it or something.

We are staying at Satelite Motel in The Soo. I don’t know if that’s Canadian spelling or if they just spelled it wrong. But it was spelled with only 1 L. (= It was relatively cheap, very clean, and offered free wireless. And they take pets. I would recommend it.

The only place we ate was Tim Hortons… double double! We had sandwich combos, which there means coffee and a donut! lol

Superior Circle Tour - Day 2

Across the street from Nays Provincial Park was Nye’s Diner and Camping. We stopped there to get some ice then decided that we were actually very hungry. The pups were OUT! I’m not sure they slept very well last night. It was a little cold. But we’ve been in colder. Lorrie had eggs, bacon, hashbrowns, and toast while I had a burger with fries. The place was very clean! The owner was cooking and did a great job! He also loaned me a couple wrenches to try and tighten my bike rack. They weren’t terribly busy but he said they have a lot of business in the winter with snowmobiling and snowshoeing in the park across the street. It was a small convenience and souvenir shop as well. I would definitely recommend stopping there.

As we were driving, we somehow missed Pukaswa National Park. Not sure how except that there was construction in the area and maybe the signs were down. Instead we stopped for a hike at White Water Provincial Park and were directed to Clear Water trail, which was an out and back to Clear Lake. As soon as we left the car, mosquitoes and gnats swarmed us. We’ve spent enough outdoor vacations being eaten alive by bugs and that was not in our plan for this trip. Besides, I couldn’t find the Deet. So we left to find Lake Superior again where it’s chilly and windy enough to keep the bugs away. We stopped at Agate (?) Provincial Park but they didn’t have any sites along the water. So we pressed on toward Superior Provincial Park.

Once there, our trip was over. And this becomes more of a personal than “outdoor” blog. We parked and went in to get information about sites. About 10 seconds after I left the car, I heard something. Can’t say exactly what that something was but I knew to run back. Which I did. Emma Blue had bitten Tori. She’d been excited when we stopped but I’m not sure what happened after that. I can speculate. I went to the other side of the car and moved her to her own window. Then started working on separating them better for the small drive to the site. Lorrie came to Tori’s side and saw that she was bleeding. I hadn’t seen that from my angle. Well, she was bleeding very badly. And it was around her eye. Lorrie ran in to get help from a ranger. They were quite ill-prepared for as out in the boondocks as they are! They didn’t know first aid. But at least they had a kit. Some campers were walking by and asked if we needed help. Lorrie told them what was happening and someone said something about some kind of vet training. Who knows? Anyway, this woman checked out Tori and put gauze on her eye and wrapped her head to hold it in place. It was not enough. She bled so much! Lorrie also called 411 to get the number for a vet in Sioux Ste Marie. They had an emergency system where there is a vet on-call all the time. We were a 90-minute drive away. With nothing in between. NOTHING! I drove like a crazy woman while Lorrie held Tori and told her it would be okay and to hold on. At one point, Tori moved around a little much and blood got everywhere. It was horrendous! We were crying, Lorrie screamed once, and we were trying to keep in touch with the vet who we kept losing because of the mountainous roads. To add to all the stress, the gas tank was nearly on Empty! Meanwhile, Tori. Was. Asleep! Snoring! Perhaps she was in shock. But I know her mellow nature saved her life! An anxious dog, like Emma, would have been flipping out and probably would not have made it. We finally got a good enough connection to the vet so we could get directions. Of course, his street was completely under construction. So we had to go a round-a-bout way. Gas light went on just before we got there. Lorrie ran in with Tori and then came back out to the waiting area. Her front was completely covered in blood so she got out of those clothes immediately and we left them there for the vet to discard. Tori weighs in at about 25 lbs. She had to have lost half her blood. We waited awhile, filled out the paperwork, and waited some more. They cleaned her up some but needed to do surgery to see the state of her eye… and likely to remove what was left. Lorrie asked me to leave so she could talk with the vet about something she had seen and didn’t want me to hear about it.

We went in to say goodbye to Tori and she was all wrapped up and on an IV. But she recognized our smells and gave us licks goodbye. The vet called us around 11pm, after surgery, and said she is doing well and the surgery went well. He said they did have to remove her eye as it was too damaged to save. We are to call after 10am tomorrow to see what the plan is at that time.

Emma Blue kept a pretty quiet and low profile the entire time.