Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Poor Puppy!

Every night when I get home, one of the first things I always do is let the dogs out of their pen. They have been couped up in there since the night before when we went to bed and I always feel so bad for them. But last night was a bit different. Sadie was happy to see me, but Duke was moving a little slower than he normally does. I just figured I had just woken him up and that was all. Then I saw a bit of blood on one of Sadie's paws, but Sadie is in heat right now (ewww, totally gross by the way), so that seemed normal. As I started looking more carefully at Duke and their pen, I noticed blood everywhere...I mean EVERYWHERE. It was pooled on the stone floor of their pen, it was splattered on the side of the house, the water in their bucket was red, on their food dish, inside their houses where they sleep...I mean everywhere. It looked like something had exploded and rained blood inside that pen. I quickly looked over the dogs and Sadie didn't have much of any blood on her, except from her "problem". As I get closer to Duke, I notice that some of his fur was matted with blood...on his head, his side, his ear...oh my gosh...the only thing I could think was "is my dog dying?!?" Sadie, when afflicted with the afore mentioned problem, is a very moody girl. Anytime Duke gets too close to her, she bares her teeth and they get into knock-down, drag-out fights. I guess they had one yesterday while we were at work and Duke's poor ear took the wrath of Sadie. I just can't believe that that much blood could come from one ear. After a couple panicked calls to Samuel (when I call him like that I expect him to be able to do something magically over the phone...he's half way to the coast...there's nothing he can do :)! ), he gets me to move my heart from my throat back into my chest and realize that Duke is OK, that the blood all over his fur is probably just from laying in a puddle of it since he had no other wounds besides his ear and the fact that the blood was everywhere in the pen. He assured me that he would help me get the blood off him as soon as he got home from his route. Poor thing was rubbing his ear on the concrete to try to make it feel better. I considered letting him in to try to comfort him, but the dog is covered in blood...that goes great on the beige carpet. We ended up getting him cleaned off and taken care of most of the way and he was fine this morning, but I still worry about him. I just can't imagine how many more things I will find to worry about when I have a human child at home if a canine one can cause me that much stress!!

1 comment:

Bree said...

Oh no! I hope that Duke is doing better today! that would have been a scary site to see!!