My dog, the medical experiment

Monster, my oldest airedale, probably got grabbed by a pig and had his right rear leg dislocated at the hip. At first I thought he'd been hit by a car, but when the vet examined him and shaved the leg you could see the tooth marks pretty clearly. It looks like a pig came from behind and grabbed him by the leg and shook him until the femur came out of the hip.

Don't recommend this vet

He's been an active, physical dog the entire time I've owned him, and lives to run. I took him to a vet clinic that I"m not really pleased with, who charged me $900 to tell me his leg was dislocated, and to refer me to a second vet, who actually treated him for about the same price. My other run-in with Northgate was when they charged me $1500 to do a bunch of tests on my cat and finally conclude they couldn't figure out what was wrong with him. So I took him home. Total treatment was 2 bags of saline. I will not be returning to Northgate Veterinary Clinic and do not recommend them. You can find their website here. While they did call me with costs after I took him in, I could have used that in the first place, possibly on the day I dropped him off, or at least a discussion of it. The diagnostic costs were more than the entire intial course of treatment, which wasn't cheap itself. True, some of the work was re-used. Contrast that to what happened at the next vet...

Do Reccomend this vet surgeon

Dr. Aguila at Animal Surgical Clinic of Seattle has been great. The first day the basic introduction and examination was done, and a complete rundown of the possible treatment options and costs; all in the first 30 minutes after arrival. The initial treatment was to put the dog under and attempt to reseat the femur, and then wrap the limb so that it would restrict motion and possibly allow some healing. This is a 50-50 option, and in this case it didn't work.

I found Dr Aguilas estimates of the cost of surgery and his professional attitude to be helpful. I don't like spending any more money than i have to, but having an accurate estimate of the cost of treatment upfront was very helpful. I could then make a decision, part of which is related to cost. The followup care was good, and at this point my poor dog had his hip back in place and healed, but he'll be on restricted duty for another couple of months.

The final treatment was to cut the dogs hip open and re-insert the femur in the socket, and then put in wires and screws to hold it in. I'm hopeful he'll be back to normal function at the end of this. he's a working dog, and I want to give him the best chance at return to full duties as I can.

The current treatment regimen is antibiotics 2x a day, pain medicines 3x a day, and we're just ending a regimen of anti-inflammatory medicines. For the first two weeks following surgery he was confined to his kennel to limit movement, and is now slowly returning to a more normal schedule.

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The dog park across the street

There's a fellow who leased the land across the road from my farm gate and has made a free off-leash dog park there. It's been very popular, and now there's traffic jams and cars parked on both sides of the road as people take their dogs to the park and use it.

So today I drove up and saw a woman let two dogs out of her car without a leash. The dogs saw turkeys inside my fence, and immediately ran down the fenceline, through the bars of my gate and into my property, chasing the turkeys. One of the dogs was a labrador, the other was a border collie.

It only takes a few seconds for a medium-sized dog to kill a turkey, or injure it enough that it won't survive, and the turkeys that these dogs were after are my only bourbon red toms. If I lost them I won't have any bourbon red poults this year. Finding adult heritage breed turkeys for breeding this time of year is very difficult, and the window for poults is pretty small. If I lost the birds I might not have a crop of that kind of turkey.

So I took all that in while I was opening the car door and sprinting towards the woman. "GET YOUR FXXXING DOGS. CATCH YOUR DOGS. GET YOUR DOGS OUT OF HERE!!", I yelled, and then realized that she didn't have them under control and wasn't doing anything to get them under control. She was watching them chase my turkeys. They weren't responding to her in any way.

She's standing there watching her dogs. "GET YOUR DOGS. I AM GOING TO SHOOT YOUR DOGS. GO GET THEM NOW!". I ran back to my truck and grabbed my rifle, and turned around and ran back to the gate. At this point, with the rifle in my hands, she's doing something. She's running towards Andrea, "Please don't shoot my dog!! Please". Andrea managed to grab one of her dogs to prevent it from grabbing a turkey, but the woman thought that Andrea was bringing the dog over to me to be shot. "GET YOUR DOG NOW OR I WILL HAVE TO SHOOT IT. RUN! GO!" The other dog noticed that the first dog was being held, and turned around, and the woman was able to go grab it. "PLEASE DON'T SHOOT MY DOGS!"

Keep your fxxxing dogs out of my property. I raise animals, and if your dog kills one of my breeding turkeys I'll have to spend another year waiting for another one. "But I always keep my dogs on leash!" They're not on leash now. I don't want any excuses. If I find your dogs on my property chasing or killing my livestock I will shoot them. Keep your dogs on leash until you get inside the dog park fence. "But I don't want you to shoot my dogs". I don't want to either. Keep your dogs under your control, and if you can't, learn to control your dogs.

The fence around the offleash area is that orange plastic construction netting, that's 30" tall. It's short enough that a medium sized dog can jump right over it. So even if the dogs are inside the "offleash area" they're still able to get out. Guess I've got to talk to the guy about the offleash area perimeter fence.

The best part of this is if I ended up shooting one of these dogs killing my livestock that I'd show up in the local paper. "Evil farmer kills cute puppies". Love that.