We can find traits to admire in the strangest of places. I'm not one to say I have 'heroes' but if I were, then my hero right now would be a fifteen pound Boston Terrier named Georgie. She's my mother's dog. She's a nutcase and has the most annoying bark, but I admire her greatly over the past couple months.
On January 4th, my step-father's business had it's annual (post) Holiday dinner. It was busy and the whole family was there. My husband, my mother and I came home early with the left-overs. All of my mom's dogs were left out together, which she usually tries not to do. She had five at the time. (We live in the backwoods.)
Jol (as you all know, my husband) goes to let my mom's dogs in. It's January in New England. It's cold. When he opens the door, he curses and I can hear the noise. He says that two of my mother's dogs seemed to be attacking the little one.
He goes screaming out the door. When Jol does 'angry voice' it's pretty scary.
The smart one - and the least involved of the two - a husky named Savannah jumped away and ran off right away, but the one actually in the thick of it - an Airedale named Ellie - didn't let go until Jol was nearly on top of her and just inches for hauling her off into a tree.
Georgie ran under the shed, but Jol knew she was hurt pretty bad. I corralled the bigger dogs away while my mom and Jol went to coax Georgie out. They got her, but he could already tell it was bad. She was bleeding a lot and shivering, whimpering every time you touched her.
My husband went with my mom to an Emergency Vet's - this is a Sunday. I stayed home to coordinate information between family members who live on the property and are in different places, and to take care of the other animals and so forth.
I get a call later that Georgie seems to be okay, but she lost a lot of blood. She has puncture marks and shallow gashes all over - including her neck. There was, that night, a fear of a collapsed lung, but it thankfully wasn't the case. (The emergency vet said it looked like she'd been used like a chew toy.)
The emergency vet kept her over night and then our regular vet stitched up the rest of the wounds the next day and kept her until Thursday. She had a large bandage over her chest and was on antibiotics and pain medications for two weeks.
Our vet told us that most of her skin had been separated from her body. He could fit his hand under her skin, but all of it has adhered back to her body without any dead skin or grafts or anything. She's got some lumps and scars but is nearly fully recovered.
It was a horrible evening that night, as I'm very partial to my animals, but she's doing really well. A little more skittish, but is a princess now.
The resilience of this tiny dog blows me away. She hasn't shown nearly any of the trauma that she could justifiably have and she was acting normally almost as soon as she was home. Her bandages are off, so she's not break dancing to scratch her back so much any more.
As a post script, the real aggressor in this event was given to a rescue and is now in a solo dog home. We were told by the rescue lady that apparently *female* Airedales do sometimes attack smaller dogs, thinking they're vermin. (Airedales were researched when they got her and we didn't find that about them.) We heard they could be aggressive, but she was a puppy when she was bought and raised around Georgie, so we thought it would be okay. We've had a lot of different breeds of dogs over the years.
A hard way to learn a lesson, but thank God that the little one is okay. And is now my funny, furry hero... and she's still a nutcase.
Bella
P.S. - I tried to get a picture of her with her tongue in her mouth, but it apparently doesn't fit.
