A cold, a dog and a tornado.

Now that I cover a region that goes from the Hudson Bay to the Rio Grande I spend a lot of time traveling.  (Yeah, some things never change.) I have selected Southwest Airlines as my ‘airline of choice’ in a concerted effort to avoid all things O’Hare and NOT because of the fact that I like them ‘cuz I don’t.  At all. (It all points back to ’02 when I was an IBM consultant there and the combination of a jumpy velcro wall, some minor swear words, a prostitute and several late night runs to IHOP forever tarnished my impression of everyone’s (but mine) favorite airline) Unfortunately, my desire to avoid the big “O” came back to haunt me. You see, last week, Southwest Airlines gave me the flu.

Yeah, yeah, maybe it was the four-city tour through the heartland that Jamie forced me to go on in an effort to keep me from voting, the three hours of sleep I got on Thursday night or perhaps it was just because it was the first Friday in November, and I always get sick in November…whatever it was, I got sick and I blame Southworst. (Free drink coupon anyone?)

What was truly fascinating about this ‘sickness’ though was not the disease itself (calling it a disease seems so much more dramatic) but how my dog, Myles handled it. OMG! What a sweety-pup!

Starting Saturday morning (after my trip to the gym where I rather unsuccessfully tried to ‘sweat it out’) and straight through to Sunday night (and four hours of ‘Storm Chasers’ whereby nary a tornado was spotted) Myles never left my side – not even to eat. He didn’t bring me a bone, he didn’t bring me a squeaky toy – he just curled up and pressed his hot little water bottle body up against my side. When I coughed, Myles would whine and lick my face until I stopped.

Isn’t that what dogs happen to do when they know that death is eminent you ask? Oh yeah, it totally is.  So all weekend, while half of me was so touched by this outpouring of doggie emotion the other half of me kept wondering if Myles knew something that I didn’t know. Would I be around next Sunday to see the Storm Chasers finally catch their tornado? Would I live to fly to Omaha again?

Alas, come Monday morning the dog was back to dumping his toys on my lap and dragging his dog bowl around the kitchen floor. Guess Myles ‘the Grim Reaper’ just got his signals crossed.