Dog Days Of August II

In my last post I wrote about a young beagle caught in a trap and what seemed to be a happy ending. Now for the rest of her story.

The excitement of her rescue faded in the ensuing weeks, and after a few retellings of her story, (including a cautionary note about traps), routine settled in again. As much routine as possible anyway when a late night call for a stray hit by a car didn't especially raise my eyebrows. The lady who called was neither an established client nor a pet owner but rather a Good Samaritan who found an injured dog in the dark on the expressway and wanted to bring her in for care. Remarkably, despite multiple pelvic fractures and some road rash she was fairly stable when I examined her. I administered supportive fluids, antibiotics and a good dose of pain medication. I gently cleaned her wounds, protectively bandaged what I could, and bedded the little beagle down for the few hours until morning.

(Courtesy of winnepeg.olx.ca)

 
It was actually my assistant who, looking askance at the stray beagle, said she looked familiar. (I must confess, after 20-odd years of practice, to a certain blurring of tri-colored beagles. If you've seen one...)

(Courtesy of diamondkennel09)

"No way," we decided.
It couldn't possibly be the one we'd rescued and placed in the care of an established doggie person. Still, she did have a certain air of familiarity and a bit of an indentation behind her ears and so we called our foster home and inquired about the beagle we'd placed.

Sounding a bit distressed, the gentleman said she was a diligent digger and after several foiled attempts had managed to escape his fenced yard several days after he took her home, in the vicinity of the expressway upon which our current inmate had been hit.  By this time, the lady who had rescued her had decided she'd like to adopt and nurse the broken little dog back to health and so she did. In the ensuing several years our twice-rescued stray healed, sailed through a couple of surgeries and despite an uneven gait and some issues with constipation has been quite healthy. Aptly or not, her name now is "Lucky."

(Courtesy of The Reticule)