Dog Drama

I want to catch ya'll up on what happened last week to one of the dogs. I warn you now that there will be a picture that is quite gruesome. If you have a squeamish stomach you might want to just skip todays' post and come back Wednesday:-)

We have three large dogs. Two are American Bulldogs and the other is a Weimaraner. 

These dogs stay inside and outside. At night I like to keep them on the front porch with a dog bed so that they can keep coyotes off the property. They will often spend their nights running off the porch in a mad dash to chase critters away.

They are all great dogs with children and we love them very much.

Thursday I woke up and upon entering the garage from the kitchen I found what seemed to be a crime scene from CSI. There was blood soaked into my rug and there was blood all over the garage floor. No animals were in site but the children and I quickly ran around trying to account for all of our pets.

The cats were all fine, the cocker spaniel was fine, the bulldogs were fine. The Weim, Arwen, was not fine. We opened the front door to find her standing on the porch wanting inside. She looked like this.

She looked terrible but she was walking fine. She also had a huge slice on her left side.

Journee and I immediately loaded her up and rushed her to the vet. Once we arrived they took her back and within 15 minutes had a plan to send her immediately to surgery. The owner of the vet practice does all of the complicated cases and he was ready to get started.

We have no idea what happened. Here is what the vet can almost 100% rule out.  He does NOT think it was a car or a train (we live right next to a RR track). It was NOT a dog attack or a barbed wire fence. He said it looked more like a knife or large blade type of damage. He also said she had fractured a bony process on one of her vertebrae.
He came to the conclusion that she was sliced with a bush hog mower or some other type of large mower. Of course this happened sometime between 6am-8am and the property right next to us had not bush hogged. I may never know what happened.

After two days of vet stay we brought her home.

She looked so much better! The vet did a great job. He did have to remove a large section of skin and fat so she will always have a little bit of deformity as far as the way her back looks.

She has over 100 stitches and about 8 drains. She is eating well and is taking two pain killers and two antibiotics. I am giving the dog 6 pills twice a day. Thank goodness for sliced cheese:-)

I am keeping her confined in a dog crate in the living room, but we take her out several times a day to go outside and drink water. Most of her drains are drying up with the exception of one in the back that drips like crazy. I hope that it will dry up in a day or so.

It's amazing how well she gets around and wags her tail. Dogs are tough and she was super happy to be home.

The bulldogs were happy to see her, and Duke sleeps in the living room near her crate. He has not wanted to spend much time out at night and I will not force him.

Both bulldogs still hang out on the porch during the day though.

I still lay in bed at night and scratch my head trying to figure out what happened to the sweet dog. It makes me nervous tpo let them outside but I guess that will get beter with time.

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Athena is getting better each time she rides. She's slowly fattening up and her rain rot is still getting better. Journee is trying to ride her every day.

Athena is such a well tempered horse. Yesterday Journee had her near the front steps so Fletcher could pet her.

I am not sure what they were discussing in this picture, but the baby was very serious:-)

Here's to a week of NO drama! :-)

I hope your week is drama free too!