Sunday, October 3, 2010

An EMERGENCY Run to the VET

These photos are not the best. I was still kinda shaky after all the drama. This all happened less than 3 hours ago.
These are AFTER photos. Believe me, you would NOT want to see the BEFORE.
In my last post, I talked about Button and I mentioned that she can be bossy and bitchy. Sometimes she can hardly eat or drink water because she is growling so hard. When she growls like this, all the dogs just stay away from her. But if you can't HEAR her growling, you have no warning. I'm assuming this is what happened. She must have been "protecting" her water and Blue must have put his face down to drink. I've seen this situation ALMOST happen before but I guess when Blue didn't back away, she must have leaped all 7 pounds of herself at him. I heard him give this deep growl bark and I spun around to yell at them but she was already walking away. I thought all was well. Then about 20 minutes later I was walking through the room and looked down at Button. She is so small and low to the ground, that it's hard to see her face. But I noticed something white on what I thought was above her eyes. I picked her up and BOTH eyes were bugged out of her head. I'm talking where they were almost completely out! Usually they are all brown but this way there was just as much as white showing. The only way I can really think to describe it is, and I don't mean to be disrespectful in anyway, but when I was VERY small, a zillion years ago, I remember a very old movie, it might have had Mae West in it and there was a frightened black man in the movie and they showed his eyes all bugged out. It was horribly racist. I hate to even use it as an example but that is what sprung to my mind.
SO... I, in a panic I called Doc, the veterinarian that I work for, on a Sunday evening and told him what had happened. He said that "Isn't good" and to meet him over at the clinic.
When I got there we had to take Button into surgery and knock her out and he had to PUSH her eyeballs back in her head. Her left eye was the worst and the eyelid didn't want to close.So he had to put some stitches in her lids to temporarily to keep it closed. The other eye looked much better. I asked him when he first came in, if she was blind and he replied "Not Yet".  He said it was a good thing that I called him. So I took her home with pain meds and I have to apply eye ointment and an ice pack for 5 minutes every 2 hours.
Like I told Doc.I'm not defending Blue BUT she is the one that always starts the fights and growls at the others over her bowls. I think Blue just was startled with her jumping at him and biting at him. Given the HUGE size difference, even though he must have just grabbed her for a second, the pressure was enough to push her eyeballs out.....
That being said, if he meant to really hurt her. She won't be alive.
Here are her photos. I had a shaky hand obviously. You can see her squinting out of her right eye and the left one is sewn shut for now until it heals.
Never a dull moment at my house.
These look like drunken MUG shots! With her hair all  messy from a fight (and surgery).

5 comments:

Nita Stacy said...

Oh...my gosh. How terrible. I have a friend who has two boy shitzus and they fight (she stupidly never got them fixed) and one of them has had one of it's eye's pop out twice. She's spent $3,000 twice...fixing it. He recuperated just fine and can see just fine. But they keep the two apart all the time. Which makes for a miserable home life.

I hope Button will be ok. My friend had to take her's to a dog ophthalmologist.

Let me know how things go with her.

Gillian said...

Lucky you work for a vet!

Poor all of you! You must need a bit of a hug and a cup of tea.

I used to work for a vet. One day a kid brought his dog in and said it had been run over by a car. It's eyeball was hanging out of it's eye socket. I have a bit of an eyeball aversion since then. And this other time a cat got a thorn... well never mind.

All's well that ends well?

yoborobo said...

OMG! You must have completely freaked out. I am freaked out just reading this! And I am betting she surprised Blue, because like you said, if he had wanted to do Button in, he could have made fast work of it long ago. I hope your little girl is going to be okay. Are you going to be okay? xox!!! Pam

denise said...

Just when ya think all is OK with the darling creatures!

I hope Button Bitch (oh, did I say that out loud?) heals quickly...and I hope you have recuperated from the incident, talk about heart wrenching!

sassypackrat said...

Oh how awful! You must have been so scared! Poor pup!