Close One with My Dog

Great day of getting the yard ready for Spring and the growing season that included scalping the turf to 1.5" to stimulate growth. Word to the wise, when you do this you pick up almost ever little thing in the yard. Every little thing means every rock, pebble, and including freak pieces of metal that you can't see. These item are hurled at phuc chit up speeds when riding a commercial grade lawnmower too. My dog found this out all to well today. He got caught with what I suspect to be a small piece of metal that hit him right under his front left leg in what we will call his left armpit if comparing to a human. Ungodly shrieks from the dog. Granted he is about 15-20 yards away, but I hear and then see him limping/running on three legs in a circle....BLEEDING. Mind you he only weighs about 50lbs. I shut down and grab him up and take him to the sqaud car in the basement and grab my Oh Chit bag aka cut, stabbed, and or shot bag. The RN wife runs out and is helping me. Thank God for quickclot, basic trama traning, and pressure bandaging. I'm off like a meteor to the Emergency Animal Hospital about 40 minutes away. I'm really worried he will not make it due to bleeding out. The trip takes about 30 minutes. The dog is rushed into surgery and patched up. The projectile (doc thought it was a gun shot wound till I told him) cut him to the bone and was about 1.5 to 2" wide. Lots of stitches (internal and external), antibiotics, painkillers, and TLC in his future, but he is good to go.

I post this to make you think about what you carry in the woods or on an ATV. Can you handle a bad cut, stab/puncture wound, or gsw to you yourself or a partner. Have you practiced dealing with such? This got my heart rate up (my family's dog in a bad spot). Had to secure/hold him down, triage, and handle what I could without any warning.....makes you think. While we were getting the dog repaired my wife cleaned up A LOT. This is only what she missed due to darkness.

Where he was running on three legs:


Oh Chit bag from patrol car:


What was left when I got back from the Animal hospital to kinda show what we used to slow the bleeding:


Ol Boy's post surgery x-ray. Arrow shows where the trauma reached the bone. It doesn't look like much, but take my word for it:




Purple Heart winner asleep after pain meds and cleaned up at home. The blue bandage is from his IV. The other dark red is the outskirts of the wound:


Just some food for thought when it might mean something more important. I love this guy, so my heart rate was up packaging him for transport the best we could.