I took her to a park close to my house this afternoon. I usually take the leash off at a secluded, out-of-the-way place to throw her tennis ball in the lake and she goes and gets it and brings it back. Well, today was same as usual, but then I threw the ball, Mindy went after it, I heard a loud THUD and heard her yelp, but she was still going in the water until I told her to stay...good dog! If she hadn't skidded to a stop, she would have had nasty pond water in her wounds.
I looked down and saw a metal pike that was painted green and nearly invisible that she hadn't seen either and she'd hit it at nearly top speed. It scraped her all the way from her shoulder to her flank on her left side. She has two deep gouges on her shoulder, but the flank is the worst...where the fleshy skin is between the thigh muscle and the base of the ribs...it had ripped her skin all the way down to the next layer of tissue. It didn't bleed right away, but we had a decently long walk to the car and by the time we got there it was bleeding pretty badly. I tried to carry her, but she was soaking wet and I have a bad wrist and a bad back and had to put her down after just a little while, but she seemd just fine...no limping or anything.
She's at the vet's right now. She's going to need stitches in all three gouges. And she'll probably go home with pain meds and antibiotics tomorrow when I pick her up. The hard part is going to be trying to keep her calm...with her fresh wounds she was all wiggly and waggly at the vet's and wouldn't sit still when they touched her...she just wanted to lick everyone and was just so HAPPY. My vet, Dr. Jonas said that she's going to have some nice welts and bruises on her legs from where Mindy got her with her tail.
Please send some good thoughts our way, though I'm sure my Mindy Lou will do just fine.