A rather traumatic day

Well what a day of worry we had following a freak accident first thing yesterday morning. I was getting ready for work and four of the dogs that were coming with me (Spark, Ethan, Dottie and Faith) were upstairs with me and being particularly boisterous and silly, play fighting and bouncing on and off my bed while I was getting sorted (this is actually pretty normal behavior) but once I grabbed my phone and coat and headed out onto the landing they knew we were leaving the house and did their usually race down the stairs to the front door; Tammy and Mac were already downstairs and the four thundered down to join them when I heard the most almighty crashing sound, I had absolutely no idea what they’d done but they’d obviously broken something! As I got half way down the stairs I was shocked to see the glass panel on the inner door completely smashed and a dog lying in the porchway, I could hardly believe it, this is a big old heavy glass panel. I ushered everyone out the back, they all looked fine and Tammy, who had been the one in the porch, ran through into the dining room so I started to sweep all the glass up and noticed blood on one of the larger shards, Tammy had blood on a back foot so I assumed she’d stood on some of the glass on closer inspection however I was appalled to see a horrific injury to her front left leg; a large gaping hole revealing bone and severed muscle and tendons, the shard must have sliced straight through. I called the vets immediately but they were still on answerphone for emergencies only so I decided to just drive down there and they would be open by the time I arrived. The nurse came out and had a quick look and then took her straight through to see the vet, leaving a bloody trail across the carpark and reception; there was too much blood and mess to see anything clearly so they just bandaged her up to stop the bleeding, gave her a shot of painkiller and took her through for a GA so they could investigate and repair the damage more easily. I was concerned she had broken the bone and Kirsty was concerned there wasn’t going to be enough skin to close the wound. I just had to leave her. After an agonizing couple of hours the call came to say she was awake and had a good colour, they had stitched the muscle and tendons back together and cleaned everything up and managed to close the wound, time will tell how well that holds but thank god she is ok for now and she is home.

The scene of the crime...


The patient...


I still don’t know exactly what happened, I can only assume Tammy heard me coming and was stood by the door waiting to go out, the location of her injury would certainly suggest that; the four dogs racing down the stairs were carrying so much momentum that they didn’t stop before they hit Tammy and the force knocked her straight through the glass panel. Those dogs could do that a hundred times over (as they have) without anything happening but for some reason today, everything came together in such a way that the worst case scenario did occur. Ok, maybe the worst case would be that a major artery was severed and Tammy bled to death, or…instead of a dog it had been my 5 year old nephew pushed through that panel but you know what…never, not once have I ever considered the danger of that glass door or ever even contemplated that someone might hit it with sufficient force to break it although the vet did tell me that her dog had done the same, rushing to the front door when the doorbell rang when one day she just didn’t stop and went straight through it! We have (fairly obviously) decided to replace the panel with a solid wooden one, no more glass