"Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty;

not on your past misfortunes of which all men have some."
Charles Dickens

Saturday, October 21, 2006

A most traumatic evening...

My Tessa was badly hurt by my neighbour's mongrel just this evening.

She was patrolling the back portion (ie. that little 13 inch width space separating my back door and the back lane of my house) when the neighbour's maid came out to keep clothes. Two of the neighbour's dogs (female, whom henceforth I shall term, "bitch" and her son) ran out. There is some history to this but I shall skip that cos hati sakit.

The bitch lunged at my back gate (which was barricaded by plastic mesh) and tried to get my dog but failed. She then moved to another portion of the fence and managed to get underneath my fence and got Tessa, dragged her out from under the fencing and across a drain to the back lane.

A struggle between maid and her bitch ensued whilst Tessa was firmly planted in the bitch's jaws! All this time, i was frantically desperately, madly trying to open my back door to get to the back portion of the house! Screaming hysterically watching in horror as my dear dog was being torn apart by the bitch!

Finally i got out to the back portion of the house and opened the back gate too. The bitch after being held down by the maid and me (holding her hind legs whilst maid was in the thick of it!) finally, finally, finally somehow released Tessa. By then Joshua has arrived at the scene and I asked him to grab Tessa. Tessa though bit him pulak! I suppose because she was in pain where he grabbed her. Then the stupid bitch promptly pee-ed on me! I let go of her hind legs when she let go of Tessa and finally, finally, finally the maid got the dogs back into their holding area aka compound and I grabbed my Tessa too!

Thankfully, Josh's wound wasn't but a graze and after tending to him and cleaning his wound, I found Tessa to see the "damage". She was bleeding slightly but I couldn't see where and I daren't touch her for fear of hurting her further. Got her towel and wrapped her up and we went to the vet's.

These things seem to always happen on holidays or the eve of holidays and thankfully, the vet was still open in Taipan. There were a couple of puncture marks in her belly and side. She got 2 stitches on her belly and antibiotics, anti-inflamatory medicine and because the vet will be away for like 5 days, she told me to look out for internal injuries.

Tessa got home and then I noticed that she was not using one of her hind legs. She is mostly motionless which is very rare for Tessa if you know her vibrant, busy, active self and will remain rooted to the spot unless I call her. We also have to put a special E-collar for her to stop her from biting her stitches. That adds to her discomfort. She can no longer move freely in and out of the grills and for tonight is confined to her bed.

She keeps staring at me with doe eyes, attempts to jump but it looks rather feeble. I think her body must hurt like mad. Will need to observe overnight for internal injury but I am rather concerned as I see one bad sign which the vet asked me look out for, and that is laboured breathing. I have not noticed her breathing before and just now when I got home from LCG Combo night at Teng's, she seemed to be breathing rather differently... I pray she will last the night. The vet seems to think she'll be ok but I would feel much better if she is better tomorrow too. The thing is, it's Deepavali and no one's working tomorrow.. Poor, poor Tessa...

I hope the maid, who also got bitten will be feeling better tomorrow too... Poor, poor maid. She must be as traumatized as I am, if not more...

1 comment:

The Wanderer said...

Sad state of affairs for animal lovers. Get the bitch put down. This time it was Tessa, next time it'll be someone's toddler. There's a reason dangerous dogs are destroyed.