Brady's misadventure

I've had Brady for a year or so. Just recently he has taken to jumping the fence. Generally he has just come into the yard near the house, ran around a little, looked for the cat and cat food. Yesterday he was out in the dog yard and pasture running with Sparky. I saw Sparky come back in and hang around the gate without Brady. He trotted back out a few times and I kept expecting Brady to come back in with him. I walked out into the pasture and looked around to make sure he wasn't just hunting the tree line and ignoring my calls, but he just wasn't there.

I'm cursing the damn dog for jumping the fence and not having enough sense to stay where he was well off. I put Sparky back into the kennel and we noticed that he was up on the high platform in the kennel looking out towards the front of the property and barking. Sparky kept insisting that something was happening out front, so I finally got in the car to drive up the road and have a look. I didn't have to go far and found Brady just about 10' outside our fence, on top of the bank along the road. He was laying there and looked ok, but was unable to move. His back legs were obviously injured and had some wounds. I picked him up and carried him to the van and drove back home.

Clay found the peroxide and I poured some on the most apparent wounds and then we carried him inside, up to the office, making sure that Sparky saw that we had him back so he would settle down. He seemed to have no use of his back legs but wasn't actively bleeding and strangely enough he wasn't expressing a lot of pain. Generally when a dog is in pain you can see it in their eyes and they may pant heavily and vocalize. Brady has always been a very vocal dog; I sometimes think he's never had an unexpressed thought. He laid down, rested comfortably, seemed glad to be here and even wagged his tail a bit. I gave him some pain meds and he relaxed. We discussed whether or not to go to the emergency vet but I decided against it. The more I looked at him, the more I thought this may have been the result of a dog fight rather than a car. He had some puncture wounds that looked like bite marks. The emergency vet would have cleaned up the wounds, put him on an IV, given him pain meds, and taken xrays. The bill would have come close to $1,000 and I'd still have a dog that needed to go to the vet today.

Because he didn't seem to be in terrible pain after I medicated him, I decided to wait. He slept all night although he did move himself around a little bit on the floor here in my office. We carried him to the car this morning and I drove him to the vet. Dr. Hudson examined him and didn't think there was enough swelling to indicate a fracture. On initial exam, she thought he may have a torn cruciate ligament in the right rear leg.

Just had a call from the vet. Amazingly, no fractures, but his right hip is out of the socket. They will anesthetize him and try to get it back into place manually. It was a car strike, not a dog fight after all. All things considered, he is a lucky little dog.