Suka's ER Visit

Warning: this post contains photos a bit more graphic than what I usually post, 

including images of wounds pre- and post-stitches. 

Please skip this one if you get ookie at the sight of blood.

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For quite a while now, we have been struggling with some neighbor dogs who run free across fences and down roads and basically wherever they have the inkling. Unfortunately for us, that has meant on many occasions that they're on our property... and more than likely, they're barking us, chasing us, or most recently, antagonizing our dog.

Our dog, for all her faults, only chases them out of her territory, and has never (to the best of our knowledge) been the initiator. They've engaged each other in the past, and at one point that led to a laceration on Suka's shoulder and a bloody snout for one of the others.

However this past weekend things went to a whole new level, and Suka ended up spending 5 hours in the pet ER. It's not clear exactly what went wrong, because per their usual the neighbor dogs came onto our property, Suka responded by chasing them off, they ran into the brush that constitutes our property boundary, and when she came back home she looked like this:

Of course it was a holiday weekend, no normal vet business hours to be had, so off to the ER she was whisked. After intramuscular sutures, staples, and stitches, she's on the road to being good as new. 

Because this was a second engagement- on our property- we went ahead and had all the reports filed, the bills and photos submitted, and one of the two antagonist dogs captured and taken away (we've already tried talking to the neighbor directly and having animal control talk to them without threat of removing the dogs, all for not). Now, like in some weird pet CSI show, I have to go down to the animal control office and identify the confiscated dog as one of the ones that have been harassing us to be able to get on with the process. After that the neighbors will be called on the carpet for this situation and we'll hopefully be well on our way to a satisfactory resolution.

My brave pup was only out of it the first night, and ever since has been charging around the house like she's good as new, crashing in to everything as needed, cone head be damned.

I can honestly say at this point that I'm looking forward to having her back to her fully-functioning, rambunctious, and completely intact self, cone free, and that's no lie. One week down, one week to go. Poor SukaBoo.