Recovery is Ruff

I believe the last time I wrote about Bubbles and her wound, the vet had thought that it was healing well and she wouldn't need surgery. Well that all changed this past Monday when I took her in for another bandage change. Apparently the wound had opened up again and he decided that three weeks of doing the bandage changes and waiting for it to heal on its own was long enough.

So Ms. Bubbles had surgery on Wednesday - they had to go in and debride more of the tissue that wasn't healthy. They also had to close down the spacing that was left from the wound so it wouldn't fill with fluid again and form another seroma, so they had to tack down some of the tissue directly to her leg muscle. Lucky girl got a little nip/tuck during her procedure, although that might mean one leg is leaner than the other! Ha! I am sure she doesn't care.

We had a little bit of a scare before they did the surgery. The vet was doing a preliminary physical assessment before putting her under anesthetic and found a solid mass in her mammary tissue. He took a sample to check it out on a slide and thankfully determined that it was not cancerous. He was concerned that it might be mammary cancer, which is pretty bad according to him. It appears to be another site of infection that can be dealt with by Bubbles taking antibiotics. The vet is still sending a sample off to a pathologist to double check but he really thinks it is non cancerous.

Poor Bubbles is definitely not herself. When I first brought her home, she basically just stood in the spot where I set her down. She had to be carried out of the vet and from the truck into the house. I finally got her to lay down (by picking her up and turning her so she was on her side rather than standing) and she has basically been in that position since we got home yesterday. Of course she still eats...I mean, it is Bubbles after all. But I can tell she is definitely in pain and is afraid to try to move her leg because of the pain. She has yet to go to the bathroom and I am pretty sure I am going to have to carry her out when she does need to go.

Here are some pics I took when she got home yesterday:

Bubbles on her favorite doggie bed...cone of shame still on, I think this is week 5.

They shaved quite a bit to make sure the area was clear.

Close-up of the stitches. She goes back in 2 weeks to get them out.

So for the next few days, I will be Bubbles' nurse. I have been bringing her food bowl and water bowl to her so she can eat and drink. She won't even get up for food, so I know she doesn't feel good. I also have to ice her wound every two hours to keep the swelling and inflammation down. In the next day or two I am hoping she starts to move around a bit more. This should be the last of this ordeal for her and the antibiotics should get rid of the mass in her mammary tissue as well.

I will keep you updated!!

Attack!

This past week has not been a good one. As you know, we had chosen a house in town to move into on April 1st. I had moved our stuff from the hotel in the morning and then went to pick up Bubbles from the kennel so that she had some time to check out the house before the movers came. We had movers bring some temporary furniture (couch, floor lamps, coffee table, dresser, etc.) and another set of movers brought out our unaccompanied baggage. Everything went great and I had started to unpack items that afternoon.

Around 5 I realized that it had been awhile since Bubbles had been out, so I took her to the front yard on her leash. For those of you who do not know Bubbles, she has a tendency to eat things that aren't necessarily food and I hadn't had a chance to inspect the yard, so I wanted to make sure she didn't get into anything she shouldn't. Sure enough there was a chicken egg in the yard that she was very interested in but I pulled her away before she could eat it. The neighbor's dogs were in their yard and at the fence separating our two yards; of course Bubbles wanted to go to the fence to sniff and say hi. We slowly walked to the fence; I didn't want her to lunge at them. As soon as we got to the fence, the dogs (two pit bulls) started barking at Bubbles and pushing at the fence. The crawled under the fence and began attacking Bubbles!!

I fell to the ground trying to protect Bubbles from the dogs and keep them off of her but I couldn't get them off. I was screaming for help and kept trying to protect her from the dogs. After about a minute the owner of the dogs came out but she's about 5 feet tall and there was no way she was going to be able to pull the dogs off, especially since they didn't have collars to grab. I kept prying their jaws off Bubbles but every time I got one off her they just bit her in another spot.

Two other neighbors came, one with a shovel and one with a rake, and they began beating the dogs to get them to stop. I don't know how long this went on but it felt like several minutes...it was probably less than five minutes. They finally got the dogs back to their yard and tied up with rope so they couldn't get loose again.

Poor Bubbles had several bites and puncture wounds, especially on her back. She could have been hurt much worse, they could have easily killed her, but she was definitely injured. The owner came back and was apologizing profusely while the other neighbor gave me directions to a nearby vet where I could take her to get checked out.

So it turns out that Guam does not have any emergency vet facilities on the island. I happened to get lucky and go to a vet that was open until 8pm (at this point it was almost 6pm and most vets are already closed). I did have to wait about an hour because the vet had other appointments that she was scheduled for already but she got in to see us and do a consultation. Bubbles ended up staying at the vet for two nights. She had to go on two types of IV antibiotics because the dogs here have a lot of germs in their mouths and bite wounds can become infected easily. They had to clean her up and clip her hair in a few areas to get a better look at the wounds.

This is the worst of the wounds right after the attack.

After getting Bubbles taken care of, the vet recommended I take myself to the emergency room to get my wounds looked at. Not that my wounds were serious, I had several scratches on my arms and legs and then a couple open wounds on my fingers from prying the dogs' jaws open. Luckily the wounds were all superficial, so I just had to clean them up with some antiseptic soap and put some antibiotic cream on them...no stitches needed.

Needless to say, I was very upset about the whole ordeal and did not want to go back to the house. I contacted my Realtor and told him about the attack. I also contacted Navy Housing so they would know about the attack as well. The landlord came to the house the next evening to apologize for the attack happening and said she would get the fence fixed and everything would be good (She's a Chinese woman and her English is a little broken). I told her that I did not want to stay at the house - I do not feel safe at the house and do not feel that it is safe for my dogs. I still had our other dog Edge coming onto the island and I didn't want a similar incident with him. The landlord didn't seem to want to hear what I was saying, she kept saying that once the fence was fixed, everything would be fine. (The fence is simply a chain link fence with no reinforcement on the bottom, so it was easy for the dogs to push at the bottom and crawl under. I have placed bricks at the base of the fence now to plug up any holes, but it is really just a temporary fix, the fence should be replaced with something much sturdier.)

After she left, I spoke to the owner of the two dogs, the husband, and he was also very apologetic. His dogs had never attacked another dog before, so he had no idea what prompted it. He also mentioned that he and his wife had just moved into their house about 2-3 months ago and before he moved in, he had asked the landlord (same woman, she owns both houses) to fix the fence. So now it's been 2-3 months that she has known the fence was an issue and it still hasn't been fixed or replaced!! That just made me even more convinced that I do not want to stay in the house.

Friday I spoke with Navy Housing again and found out that I have to get the landlord to sign a letter of release stating that she will release me from the lease on the house. My Realtor came to the house and took the letter of release to pass on to the leasing agent who works directly with the landlord. That evening I spoke with the leasing agent and he said he was having a hard time convincing her to let me out of the lease. Apparently she was very concerned about losing the money because she would have to give us back our deposit. Nice, huh? I reiterated my stance and stated that I absolutely did not feel safe in the house with my dog and did not want to stay there. I want to get out of the house as soon as I can. Later that evening he called me to let me know that he had convinced the landlord to sign the letter and he would email it to me once he received it.

The problem is that the landlord was scheduled to leave Guam on Sunday morning to go to Taiwan until April 18th. I was afraid she wouldn't sign it before leaving.....and apparently she didn't because it is now Monday morning here and I still haven't received the letter. I am really worried that she will try to screw me over by not signing the letter at all or by waiting to sign the letter. In the meantime, I found an apartment complex that allows dogs and does month to month leases for military families. The problem is that I cannot sign up for the apartment until I have that signed letter. Also, the apartment won't be available for about 1.5 weeks, so I will have to stay at the house until then....provided I get the letter.

So for the past few days I have been very stressed to say the least. I picked up Bubbles from the vet on Friday and she seems to be doing okay although she did not want to get out of the car when we got to the house. I can back into the carport so that she is completely hidden from the neighbor's yard and we can get into the house without the dogs seeing her. Now every time I take her outside, we have to go on the other side of the house, so she is out of view of the dogs. Poor thing is definitely more skittish now...the chickens in the yard startle her.

Bubbles is on two different antibiotics now and pain medication. The puncture wound in her back is the worst wound and has to be covered with gauze that has antimicrobial medicine on it and that has to be covered by an adhesive bandage which has to be changed every day. The neighbor who owns the dogs did pay the vet bill, so I am glad that I didn't have to fight about that at least. They have been very nice which is good. Here are pics of Bubbles now:

This is on her chest area.

This is on her side where she just had some bruising



Showing her bandage that she has to wear.



The puncture wound without the bandage.



As of now, I am still trying to get the letter of release so that I can make arrangements to get out of the house. In the meantime, Bubbles and I are trying to stay occupied and distracted. Yesterday she pushed the vertical blinds aside to look out the sliding glass door and saw the dogs in the neighbor's yard. She kinda growled and then came to where I was sitting....she was shaking! Poor thing definitely has PTSD. Hopefully the landlord signs the letter very soon and I will not have to worry about it anymore...keep your fingers crossed for us.