Brute Force Trauma

The main event of the morning came in the form of a Shar-pei. The teenage owners (Siblings? Lovers?) brought him in last night hoping he could be seen, but Christie and I were doing an excruciating dental (I talked about this yesterday), so they had to leave the dog overnight. We were worried about getting him out of the cage since he was so aggressive yesterday, but Terry the Dog Whisperer just opened the cage and took him for a walk with no trouble! Joe had so much as walked by him yesterday and he growled. Sandy for some reason had told the owners they should do blood-work, but the dog was only four years old and healthy as a Shar-pei can be. Everyone was pretty annoyed with Sandy this morning because the dog was technically her patient, but she was gone all day at a vet hospital or something, so the work got left to Christie. So Terry and Jake (the Shar-pei) came back from their walk the best of buds, but then we had to draw a blood sample—and thank god Joe hadn’t gotten called out to a farm yet, because we couldn’t have done it without him. Jake was fine until Terry and Joe had to hold him. This dog hated being held, and we couldn’t fit him with a muzzle because his nose was too big and fat! So Terry got a rope around hi nose and Joe pinned him in between his legs and Josh stuck out the leg so Christie could draw the blood, and Jake snarled the whole time. Christie did it as fast as possible, and she got the blood, but she didn’t have time to give him a sedative, so they all went through the same process to give him some Acepromizine, a fast-acting sedative. After the sedative, Jake calmed down and snuggled with Terry in the waiting room while the blood-work went through. Of course, the blood-work came back completely normal, so we basically did all that for nothing and made the kids spend like $60. Anyway, then we had to really sedate him, enough to pick him up and put him on the table and intibate him. That went really smoothly, he didn’t even growl. Jake’s owners had said that he got in a fight with a stray dog on Wednesday, but once we had him shaved we could tell that something a bit more criminal may have occurred. Poor Jake certainly had bit marks on him from another dog—in addition to the huge slice marks on his hindquarters and tail that looked like they may have come from a shovel or spade. Either Jake was actually attacking the neighbor’s dog and the neighbor broke up the fight with a shovel, or Jake’s owners hit him. Either way, judging by the progression of the wound’s healing, it happened way longer than two days ago. Christie said owners lie about stuff all the time, and you can’t really say anything unless a dog seems like it’s being neglected or frequently abused. But sickos who do that don’t usually bring their dogs to the vet.

            After examining Jake, I don’t understand why anyone would ever own, buy or breed a Shar-pei. Natural selection is definitely trying to tell these dogs something: they can’t see, they can’t hear, they can barely breathe, and they’re prone to gross skin conditions that many people are allergic to all because of their weird foldy skin! I feel so bad for dogs like Bulldogs and pugs—it’s not their fault their bodies are deformed and tend to malfunction because humans wanted them to look a certain way.

            When Jake was finished, we did a dental on a sweet, nervous little Dachshund named Ginger. D.R came before we were finished since dealing with Jake basically took all morning. Oh, speaking of morning, we gave Lito his first wound-flushing and oral meds today. Carolyn did the oral meds herself and said he was fine; he just hated the taste. Christie told me today that it tastes like nail polish remover. I wondered briefly how she knew that, but I didn’t ask. It took all three of us to do the wound flushing, and I told Christie I couldn’t get the plastic syringe under his skin enough to get the solution into the hole, it just sort of washed over it, and she said she has had tons of abscess patients where she just sends them home with the oral meds. I think Sandy tends to over do it when it comes to treatment. Oh well. Lito was being so sweet today. His whole shoulder is still swollen, but he doesn’t seem to be in pain. I’m off to the antique mall tomorrow morning! It’s actually Friday right now, but I’m not posting this until Saturday. Sleepy!!!

Robin

P.S The title of this entry is a play on words, combing the terms “blunt force trauma” and “brute force.” It took a lot of brute force to deal with Jake, and he suffered some blunt force trauma along with his stab wounds. Poor stinky buddy. Man, did he smell.