Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I would assume most reading in the dog forum are above average owners when it comes to concern for their dogs welfare. So most of us know to "puppy proof" our homes to minimize obvious hazards but even adult dogs are much like toddlers in many respects and can manage to find themselves in harms way where none was thought to exist.
For example my Catahoula mix who is a rather lightweight leggy dog who loves to jump on and off things completely hung herself up (suspended off the ground) when both her front legs got wedged between the boards on the top of a picket fence. The memory of her screaming still gives me chills! I went running to the side of the house having no idea what to expect.
Anyone else have an unexpected event occur in what they thought was a completely safe environment?
We used to have a short timber walkway made from old railroad ties when we lived in our old house. Our toy poodle got one of her feet stuck in a crack between two ties. She screamed bloody murder (scared to death, poor girlie) until I backed her leg up a few inches to the wider part of the crack and lifted it out. No damage to the leg or foot, thankfully.
Our old lab dug a small area under the same walkway to get to the moist cool sand underneath. One day she got stuck under there and a friend of mine went under and dragged her out.
Note to add: I hated that walkway. I twisted many an ankle walking on the uneven parts. I don't recommend them at ALL for people or animals lol.
The very day I lost my dog Chelsea who many referred to as Angel, my neighbors dog, Rogue a wolf mix, was watering a bush across the street and as he was walking past it, his foot slipped down into the gutter guard between the metal and the concrete. He started screaming and howling as he tried to jerk his foot loose. My next door neighbor got came to me for help and as I calmed Rogue down he went for the owners down the street. As Troy the owner held Rogue calm, my Neighbor Sherilyn and I pulled the iron grate out of the gutter to release his foot. Fortunately his foot or leg was not broken.
Years ago there was a young woman training her Doberman in the same beginner class I had my new puppy in. The woman had some issues and training the Doberman for competition was a way to focus her brain and her energy. A friend of mine had bred this dog and selected this dog just for her. This woman and her husband were bathing the dog outside one day. When they finished the dog got the zoomies and was running around like mad. You know how they get. Very happy and feeling great after a bath. She ran into the porch and snapped her head back, breaking her neck. I can't even imagine the grief. It horrified me when my friend told me what happened.
The summer we got our Walter my husband gave him a bath outside since it was 100 degrees and a good day for a bath.
A few hours after that bath I noticed Walter was not being his usual happy self and I ran him up to the Vet to see if he could figure out what was going on. It took 10 minutes and $75.00 for the Vet to figure out that Walter had dislocated his tail at some point while my husband was giving him a bath.
We think when Walter moved quickly and hit my husbands knee fairly hard is when he dislocated his tail.
I was leaving the vets office with my dog after his checkup. I pulled the door toward me and in his rush to get away from that place he rushed forward and got his foot jammed under the door! I mean, I could not move the door to free his foot at all. He screeched and I was yelling too. The vet rushed out, managed to free him and took him back on a room to examine his foot. It was fine, and he didn't limp or anything the rest of the day but it was a frightening experience for both of us. The poor guy peed all over my leg when I was holding him for the vet to get him loose.
The upside of that was it seemed to make him realize that the vet was there to help him, and he was never as afraid to go there again.
When I was a child, I had chosen a puppy from my father's recent litter of hunting dogs. He was a very small puppy for his age, and a large food bowl my father had been using to feed the entire litter somehow flipped over on him, trapping him underneath of it. He suffocated.
My dad had used that bowl to feed numerous litters before that, and there was never an issue with it tipping over. It was really a freak thing. He threw out the bowl after that.
When I was a child, I had chosen a puppy from my father's recent litter of hunting dogs. He was a very small puppy for his age, and a large food bowl my father had been using to feed the entire litter somehow flipped over on him, trapping him underneath of it. He suffocated.
My dad had used that bowl to feed numerous litters before that, and there was never an issue with it tipping over. It was really a freak thing. He threw out the bowl after that.
It was pretty horrible. My father - who tended to view his hunting dogs more as tools than companions - was in shock and was practically in tears when he explained what happened to me after I got home from school. The pup (Ranger) had been underweight and I'd brought him in to hand-feed him every day until he got up to where he should be, so he'd really become my little buddy at that point.
I had a lot of bad luck with hound dog pups when I was a kid, though that was probably the most "freak" accident. As an adult, my dogs are NEVER unsupervised when they are outside, and I keep close tabs on them when I'm home.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
That's so sad!
