First, McKay cut his foot on a broken jar in the garage. It didn't bleed a ton, but it was pretty deep, so I cleaned it and wrapped it up. It was still looking pretty bad the next day, so I took him in to see if it needed stitches. They decided that it would heal on its own and we kept it wrapped for several days until it finally did heal.
A couple of days later, Carter fell in my shower and hit his nose on the tile ledge. It swelled up immediately and he looked pretty funny for a couple of days.
Then, after the swelling went down, he had a couple of good black eyes. No pictures did it justice. It looked painful!
Finally, we went to St. George for Memorial Day, and took Bex with us. I took her outside in the park to go to the bathroom. Sitting about 100 yards away, there was a boy with his pitbull on a leash. Bex, who has no fear of other dogs, ran at it, barking. I chased after her. The boy tried to keep the pitbull away, but he wasn't strong enough. And I wasn't fast enough. Once Bex got close, he latched on and wouldn't let go. I jumped on the pile, fighting back. Bex was being thrown from side to side and whimpering. I thought the dog was going to rip her neck open and that I would watch her bleed to death. It was awful!
Finally, after a terrifying amount of time (probably 15-20 seconds), the dog let go. And thankfully, he didn't latch on to me. I quickly checked her out, and she wasn't actively bleeding, so I took her back to my mom's, visibly shaken. At first, the wound didn't look that bad. It looked like she had been scalped, but nothing more.
But as the days went on, she started scratching at it a lot, and it started to smell. I washed it, kept neosporin on it, and wrapped it in a bandage. I went and got a collar so she wouldn't try to pick at it...
...but it kept getting worse. The skin was pulled away from her body, and the more she scratched at it, the bigger the wound got. It got about five times the size it started out as, and I finally took her to a vet.
My neighbor suggested I try Coleman's in Provo, as she said he was an older guy who was really only in for the animals, not the money. Even though they were full for the day, they had me bring her down to get checked out. And, as we expected, she needed stitches. The lady quoted me $100, which I thought was a steal! I left her there at the vet's office for a few hours while they put her under anesthesia, cut away the dead skin, and sewed her closed.
I went back to pick her up a few hours later, and they gave me my invoice. $75. Total. $65 for the anesthesia and stitches and $10 for her antibiotics. Amazing, and such a huge blessing! I am still dreading the bill from Instacare for McKay's foot, where they did absolutely nothing but look at it and wrap it back up. I'm sure it will be a whole lot more than the $75 I paid to get my dog all fixed up!
We counted 11 stitches, and it was obvious that the wound was a lot worse than we had originally imagined. She took her antibiotics like a champ (in a hot dog, like my dad suggested) and she was back to her spunky self in one day. She gets her stitches out this week, and I sure hope she has learned a lesson about other dogs. I doubt it, though. She's not a quick learner. And she's going to have to be on a leash in public from now on, even when she's just out to go potty.
We survived the curse of the three injuries. And I know it's just a matter of time before we are struck with another set of three.
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