Friday 29 October 2010

Attacked by Staffies

It is not just people that get badly hurt when they are attacked. This dog was attacked by 3 Staffordshire bull terriers. They were off a lead he was on it. The neck was badly torn and an initial wet to dry dressing applied.

The swabs are soaked in sterile saline and placed into the wound, as they dry they they pull debris into the swab and clean it out. In this patients case the swabs were placed deep into the wound and held in place with "stay sutures" to help keep the wound slightly closed. The dressing was applied for 2 days running. A penrose drain was also placed to allow fluid and blood to exit the body.


On the 3rd day the wound was clean enough to use other dressings for the next stage of healing. A honey dressing was then applied and changed every couple of days. He also had some limited surgery to close part of it but it was mostly allowed to heal slowly on it's own. There was so much missing it was not going to be easy to do a full surgical repair.

Unfortunately l never got end photos but it was not a smooth repair. He had a wound breakdown and ended up being readmitted for some time while it was sorted. I understand that it was finally closed and he has resumed his old life.

2 comments:

JuliaM said...

Good grief! It looks more like a shark attack!

It annoys me that the police don't take more action over dog-on-dog attacks. Sooner or later, someone will get killed trying to defend their pet.

Chances are good that anyone that owns animals capable and willing to do this is into plenty of other illegal activities.

Vetnurse said...

The police do step in quite a few times but often blame the wrong dog. There is a lot of pretty horrendous injuries sustained by people separating dog fights. Unfortunatly a lot of time we have the wrong dog brought in as a dangerous dog cause. However when you hear the steps then it isn't the dog that's been "arrested" fault. Problem is it is people who do not understand the nuances of the situation working often on the big / ugly dog started it theory.

It may work like that in the human world l don't know but animals don't. And it can be a lot of time in an SK before the innocent party is released or destroyed.

The biggest cause of dog fights is dogs off leads. People allow their dogs to run up to strange dogs on leads, the one on the lead feels threatened and growls and hey presto, or the one on the lead cowers but the loose one is a fighter and wham!.

The other one is the person with the dog on a lead who is being responsible by having their dog on a lead shouts over "my dog doesn't like other dogs" and the cretin with the dog off the lead says "it's ok mine does" dohh!! well go figure what happens next.