Nightmare before Xmas

AH, CHRISTMAS. The season of goodwill to all men. And dogs.

Try telling that to Troy and Charlie.

This year, Christmas is going to be a painful experience for them both.

Troy was admitted for treatment last week when it was suspected he had a broken leg.

Sedation ( for the poor chap was in considerable discomfort) and X-rays showed our concerns to be real.

His right ulna, the lesser of the two bones of the foreleg, was broken in five places.

Since there were also various open wounds on his leg, remedial plastering was considerably hampered.

Each wound was carefully clipped, cleaned and flushed.

As I have said often before, dilution is the solution to pollution, and it has been proven recently that good old tap water is as good as, if not better than, any disinfectant or antiseptic you care to mention.

Indeed, many of the latter can do more harm to fragile tissue than good.

Once his wounds were prepped, absorbent dressings were placed on them, so that the soft padding for the plaster was protected from potentially odious discharge.

In the old days, plaster of Paris was used to support fractures and this was a great material for sucking the bad stuff out of wounds.

But modern dressings are fibreglass, which is light, rigid, hard-wearing and impervious.

After this was applied and allowed to cure, it was sawn into two halves lengthways, back and front, and taped back on, so that it could be readily removed to enable subsequent inspection of the wounds. Charlie wasn’t as lucky. The damage done to his right hind leg did not involve fractures but it was severe.

The skin was torn, so that a large dead area had to be surgically excised, leaving a massive defect.

The upside of this was it allowed examination of the catastrophic injuries to the muscles and vasculature of his thigh.

Crushed muscle was removed and sutured. Again, considerable flushing was required to clean the site. Drains were placed to prevent a build-up of fluid.

The likelihood of a return to full function of the leg is not high.

Personally, I will consider it a triumph if we can save the leg from amputation.

And the cause of these injuries?

Road traffic accident? Train crash? Fall from a great height?

No. Both Troy and Charlie were out for a wee walk, minding their own business when they were set upon by out-ofcontrol, aggressive dogs. Goodwill indeed. Happy Christmas all.

Personally, I’ll consider it a triumph if we can save the leg from amputation