Animal Update

 

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A few months ago, Caleb's work schedule changed - he now works 8 am to 7 pm Monday through Thursday, and gets Friday off.  This seems like a nice bonus weekend (or for us, work) day, and it often is, but more often it somehow gets eaten up by just one or two seemingly small jobs.  This weekend was a great example.  

Over the last few weeks, Caleb had found a new Highland bull for us, and arranged to go get him on Friday.  The owner only had a lunch break free, so Caleb needed to be north of Nashville by 11 am.  He also first had to pick up little Hank's frozen body from a friend to drop him off in Nashville for a necropsy, and then swing by the "local" (45 minutes away) Co-op to pick up a rental cattle trailer.  Then north to get the bull, back to Nashville to drop off Hank, and home.  He and Liam left at 7:30 am, and made it back by 4:30 pm - amazing how the entire day can disappear iin a blur of driving!  And they weren't done - as soon as they were back, before we'd even unloaded the new bull, we realized Whitney our dog was limping badly.  It appeared to be a compound fracture to her whole foot, so we rushed through evening chores and drove back down the mountain to the vet's just before closing at 6 pm.  It turned out she "only" had a puncture wound - but a doozy!  Something entered her foot at about the wrist, went down through her foot, and almost exited between her toes.  The vet cut that all open, cleaned it, and bandaged her up.  She also had a couple of other small holes in her - farther up her leg, on her chest...  Very strange.  All told, Caleb and Liam spent about 13 hours that day - minus 1 hour at home doing chores - on the road!  

Then, the next morning, we realized that Kaylee, Whitney's mother (yes, these are the two that already got stitches this summer!) was also injured.  She had two smaller holes in her shoulder, with a larger slit below in her armpit, as well as a hole in her back thigh with a corresponding larger slit lower down her calf.  That one was quite swollen with fluid, which we drained (she was not happy about that!).  They are now both on antibiotics and we are watching all the various wounds to make sure nothing gets infected.  As we continued to discover more odd injuries, they became more suspicious to me, especially the combination of a smaller hole and a larger tear a couple of inches away.  My instinct says they were both shot with something that scatters, buckshot-type. Sadly, it's not terribly uncommon here for hunters to shoot roaming dogs so that they don't scare the game away.  That's my guess for what happened to Kaylee's brother years ago as well.  That, or his habit of chasing cars from the front - in spite of his Bassett build - finally caught up with him!

I sincerely hope the dogs decide to stick a little closer to home after this - otherwise, we are going to need to get on the frequent flyer program at the vet!  This past year was a record-breaker for vet expenses, but in spite of this weekend, I'm hopeful that 2016 will be better.

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