The Showdown

Yes, that's blood. No, it's not for Halloween. Bill and I got home from visiting mom at the hospital last night to find Jake beaten up. We're almost 100% sure it was done by both of our next door neighbors dogs. To make a long story short, Reece (who hangs out at our house and plays with Jake) is in heat. Jake is fixed so he could care less. Leroy and Brown Dog (her name is Stinky and I refuse to call her that!) come over occasionally. Since Reece is in heat, Leroy is claiming a stake. And whenever Jake tries to play with her, Leroy goes after Jake. So we were thinking Leroy probably got Jake down on the ground (he outweighs Jake by about 20-30 lbs) and the other two joined in on the fight. Poor Jake. He ended up sleeping out in the shed, which is really a large outbuilding. He was beat up, bleeding and in a VERY bad mood. I put out some food and left him be.

This morning I was up at 0400 and finally got around to checking on him around 0530. He limped stiffly over to me and let me pet his head and generally check him over but if I got too invasive, he let me know. I was concerned because a lot of his wounds were still bleeding. He had a few chunks of fur and skin bit off (right down to the muscle wall) and his tail was in pretty bad shape as well. I called the vets at 0730 when they opened and they told me to bring him in when we could. It took Bill and I about 45 minutes to finally get him in the back of the truck. Any time we tried to put his leash on his collar, we would try to bite us. Not out of meanness, but out of fear with, I'm sure, quite a bit of pain mixed in. Jake has been known to fear bite on other occasions as well. So I knew I'd have to run in and grab the leather muzzle once we got to the vets. The only way we could get Jake into the truck was by laying out one of the moving blankets that we have and basically wrapping Jake up like a burrito in it. Then, off to the vets we went.

Once we got there I went in and asked for a muzzle. They ended up bringing a metal gurney out to the truck to help get Jake in, still a la burrito. We had mentioned that they might just want to go ahead and knock Jake out but Dr. Davis wanted to see the wounds first. A believe a remark was made about once we take the blanket off, no one is going to be able to get anywhere near him. So they ended up knocking him out via a shot to one of his back legs. It took a few minutes for him to get drowsy and we were able to slip the muzzle on him.

Once he was under enough, they carted him back and started to shave around his wounds and give him a general once over. I ran next door to get coffee for Bill and I and then we waited for some news. A little while had passed and they brought us back to the conference room. Dr. Davis said that Jake was in pretty bad shape and they were going to keep him for the weekend. He said he would give me a call on Monday morning. He asked if we would like to see his wounds before we left. Bill stayed in the lobby but I decided to go back and take a look. Since he was shaved you could see exactly where all his wounds were. He was mauled. Scrapes and scratches, puncture wounds, chunks of skin missing and his tail was a bloody mess. Dr. Davis said they were going to stitch him up but he may end up losing his tail.

So all and all, a pretty crappy day.