Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Dumb Dog!

Saturday, Shooter got kicked in the head. This is nothing new for him. He gets kicked daily. His job, as he sees it, is to help move horses. He loves to chase the horses from the barn out to pasture. I was out of town(of course, I was, everything has to happen when I am out of town). I was in the middle of a presentation of trains, when I got a call. It was on vibrate. I hit the ignore button and texted, wxplaining that I was in a presentation and couldn't get out of my seat until the presentation was over. The reply was, "Shooter kicked. eye bloody. Don't know how bad."
I showed this to Mr. BPA (sitting next to me). Somehow neither one of us was too worried. When the presentation was over, I slipped outside to call. It was PANDALERIUM!(word stolen from Jeff Foxworthy) The kids were freaking out, Shooter's whole head was swelling. Blood was everywhere. The only view of the actual eyeball made my brother-in-law think that the eyeball was ruptured. Lovely. Somehow, I did not feel panic, I made a few comments on facebook, but since he was running around and actually tried to herd the horses back to the barn, I wasn't too concerned.

I stayed in Casper(hey, we went to the BIG city!) and finished my stuff. When I got home, Shooter looked like something out of a horror film. His eye was so swollen that I couldn't pry it open. There was a cut right above the eye. He was pretty out of it from the painkillers, but he was thumping his stump of a tail and was happy to see me. I gave him a shot of antibiotics, and put some antibiotics on his open wound. I still did not get too worked up about it. ---side note---- I get worked up over everything. Rascal having her kittens made me crazy. Foxy having lady put me over the edge. One of the reasons why we haven't looked too hard at breeding Belle is that I would be living in the barn for the entire gestation period. By the end, I would be institutionalized. I babied Tigris when Sergeant stepped on him. When Shooter got kicked in the fall, I let him recuperate in the house. I get really worked up, hysterical about EVERYTHING, so I really am not sure why I was so relaxed about this.

Sunday, he still looked bad. I got him all doctored up and went to church. He started looking better that afternoon. He even tried jumping into the water troughs to cool off.

Monday, the swelling went way down. He had muscle control over his eye brows and around the eye. I could see that the eyeball was not punctured. The lens was not intact. The cut above the eye is looking better.

Tuesday, he is out and about helping with chores, stealing Belle's grain, annoying the cats. He even came out to the gate to guide me in when I came home that night -- he really likes to have the vehicle follow him to its parking spot. It makes me worried that he is going to get run over. He also could not settle down that night, he was jumping up, hitting the windows, trying to get his nemesis, the evil black and white cat from down the road. The cat was taunting him and eating the cat food on the porch. There was a cat fight in the girls' room, he had to get involved with that.

Wednesday, today, he opened up his eye wound again, but other than that, he is acting fairly normal. He is no longer hitting into my leg as we walk so that I can protect his bad side. He can see light and dark, but I am fairly certain that it is blurry. Its hard to tell with him because he is not real bright, anyway.

So, he is going to be fine. Heavy sigh. Good, I don't want to lose my dog. Then we would only have Harley. Not the best trail dog.

2 comments:

  1. It's just as scary when the pets get injured as it is when it's the kids.I'm glad Shooter's okay.

    Maybe he learned a valuable lesson, but, knowing how obsessed Cowboy was with "helping" me with the horses, probably not...

    Sigh.

    Life goes on, eh? And I know I neglected to mention that King was adopted by Michelle, but that's her story to tell.

    By the way, what did happen with Red?

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  2. Shooter did not learn any lessons. He still chases Sergeant and Mystique. His new thing is trying to sleep on the couch. He is not an inside dog, but I am a little concerned about the cut above his eye that he will not leave alone. I keep coating it with triple antibiotic ointment. It scabs up during the day, but he scrapes it off at night.

    Red was having some sort of leg problem, the same type of thing that happened with Mikey. I think, but I am not sure, that they had a ready buyer the second that Red retired. The competition pulling is rougher on the legs than carriage driving and it just caught up with him. But that was after 10+ years of carriage driving.

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