Tur Bo’s leg where he got hung in a fence.
Lady’s neck wound
Lady’s wounds
I may get back to working dogs next week but I have been thinking about some of the tough dogs I have owned. Once when my vet was sewing one of my dogs up he said he enjoyed working on bird dogs because they were always tough.
Last hunting season Tur Bo got hung in a barb wire fence that was lying on the ground. Most of the wire was covered by dirt but there was a 10 foot strand that was about 8 inches off the ground. The wire caught him at the knee, (or elbow). Whatever you call where the front leg bends. It ripped a triangular piece of skin loose and was still attached when I found him.
Tur Bo had been missing for a few minutes and I checked the Garmin GPS and it showed him on point about 75 yards in front of me. I got close and saw him lying on the ground. I couldn’t see the fence. It was hot and I thought he was lying down to cool off. That wasn’t like him but I called him to me. He stood and tried to come. I saw that his leg was caught.
As I walked to him he tried 2 or 3 times to come to me. He never yelped or made any noise. The flap of skin was wound over the wire and there wasn’t enough slack to just pull the skin off the barb. I didn’t have anything to cut the wire with so I had to take my knife and slice through the skin to cut him loose from the wire. His tail was wagging the whole time. He never made a sound while I was sawing on his skin. I didn’t have a leash with me so I had to let him run on the way back to the truck. He went back to hunting as though nothing was wrong. Now I have a pair of wire cutters and a leash in my hunting vest.
A couple of years ago I was hunting the Cooper Wildlife Area near Woodward, Oklahoma when Lucky ran in front of me shaking his head, then he would rub his face on the ground. I called him to me. He had about 25 porcupine quills in his mouth. This was before I started carrying pliers in my vest. We hunted back to the truck and I put the other dogs up.
I found some needle nose pliers in the truck. Lucky came in and put his front feet on the tail gate. I yanked a few quills out and he never yelped. After I pulled a few he dropped down and walked around shaking his head then he reared back up and I pulled more out. He took a walk 3 or 4 times before I got all of the quills out. He never made a sound when I yanked the quills out. I know he was happy when I got the last one out.
Lucky is 11 years old now and when he was about 4 I was hunting him near Polo, Missouri at the Bonanza Wildlife area. He ran by me and he was bleeding from his mouth. Dogs often get their tongues cut by briers when they are hunting. We were on the way back to the truck so I didn’t think too much of it. We got to the truck and he jumped onto the tailgate. Blood was still coming from his mouth and when they hit the tailgate each drop was bigger than a quarter.
On the way to the vets, I kept thinking about what a good dog Lucky was and if he bled to death I didn’t even have a pup from him. It was about an hour to the vets and I was really beating myself up for not breeding him. I got to the vets and I was afraid of what I would find when I opened the box. I opened the door and he walked out wagging his tail. He was no longer bleeding.
The vet checked him over and found a real small cut on the tongue. It didn’t even need a stitch but the next time that Dolly came in heat, he became a father.
Then we come to Lady the dog that all other dog’s toughness are measured by, at least by me. A friend and I were hunting near Pratt, Kansas. He had a pointer and a German wire haired pointer. I only had Lady at the time. We got to an area we wanted to hunt and turned all three dogs out. The pointer and wire hair went about 15 yards and stopped. We had turned them out in a large patch of sand burrs. It didn’t seem to bother Lady. We went ahead and hunted the area thinking the other two dogs would join us. Lady found 2 coveys of quail and some singles. When we got back close to the truck the two dogs had not moved. Lady ran back to the truck and I loaded her in the dog box. The sand burrs didn’t seem to bother her.
Another time I was hunting in northern Missouri on some private property that was leased by a hunting club I belonged to. I had had pneumonia and was still weak from it but was trying to hunt. Lady tried to cross a woven wire fence with a couple of strands of barb wire above. She was almost over when she got one of her hind legs caught in between the strands of barbed wire. She had a long cut on the leg and was hanging off the ground. I took my vest off and put it over her head. No matter how much your dog loves you it will eat you up when it’s hurting.
I lifted her from the wire and set her on the ground. She was bleeding from the cut but she went right back to hunting. I was too weak from the pneumonia to carry her. I walked the half mile back to the truck and she hunted the whole way. I got her to the vet and he sewed her up. She never made a sound when she got hung in the fence nor when I lifted her off the fence.
When she was 13 years old she was attacked by a huge mule deer when we were hunting near Pratt, Kansas. The deer was bedded down and when she came close he jumped to his feet and slammed her to the ground. (I wrote this story in it’s entirety in October of 2013. If you haven’t read it go to the October 2013 archives and read the story.) When the buck stood up she was impaled on his antlers. Another dog came close and he lowered his head and she slid off. The other dogs ran the deer off.
We were over 3/4 mile from the truck. I checked Lady out and only saw 2 wounds. I small cut along the ribs and a puncture on her left hip. There was a little blood welling in the puncture on her hip but other wise there was no blood. She walked back to the truck. A couple of times she went out like she was going to hunt but quickly returned to my side. She yelped when I lifted her onto the tail gate. I washed both wounds with some antibiotic wash I carry in my truck.
I was not sure whether she would be alive when I took her from the dog box at the vets office but she walked out of the dog box wagging. She whined when I set her on the ground but she walked into the vets office with her tail up and wagging. The vet told me to leave her and give him a call about 4:00 pm.
I called about 3:30 and he told me he had sewn up 5 places with the one around her neck being the most severe. I didn’t even know she had been cut on the neck. He kept her over night. Lady was an English setter and she had lots of hair. The long hair hid most of the cuts. The cut on her neck went all the way around except for about 2 inches under her chin. The vet didn’t sew up one of the places I knew about so he had found 4 cuts I didn’t see.
The deer attacked this 13 year old dog the second Sunday of November. She didn’t hunt the rest of November and some of December but she was back hunting most of December and all of January. She still pointed birds and retrieved. She was the best retriever I have ever had.
Lady would have been 14 years old in May but in mid April she started acting funny when I turned her out to clean her pen. She didn’t seem to be in pain she just seemed confused. I put her on her house and petted her. I knew the end was near. She liked to lick my arms when I put her on her house and talked to her. I told her if she was ready to go to go ahead. Two mornings later she was in her house dead when I went to the kennel.
Lady was not the best bird dog I have ever had but she was the best retriever. She was also the toughest dog I’ve ever seen. She’s been gone for 2 years and I still miss her.
Lady pointing Wendy backing
Lucky
Luke on point