This has been quite the eventful week, and not the good kind of eventful. On Tuesday morning Simon came in from turnout extremely lame. Thankfully it turned out to just be a pulled shoe. I got Boot City to come to the barn to help me pull it off completely and while he was pulling the shoe Mickey, our 5lb (and fearless) foster dog kept going into the stall to try to eat Simon’s food. I kept shooing him out so Simon wouldn’t get stressed about Mickey in his feed pan WHILE Boot City was pulling on his foot. Then, all of a sudden, we hear a blood curdling screech coming from Sterling’s paddock.

I ran out the barn doors to see Dickens staring at Mickey writhing on the ground. My first thought was that he had a back/spine/neck injury. Few things are worse than a horribly maimed animal that isn’t dead, but needs to be put down. Especially at 6a on a Tuesday morning. I ran over to get him out of the proximity of Sterling, who was still munching on his breakfast and seemed curious about the commotion. Thankfully Mickey’s head, neck and spine seemed fine. He was writhing around, but it seemed to be from pain and not from the lack of ability to control his body. He whimpered and slowly calmed down enough that I was able to identify he had a very smashed left front leg and quite a lot of skin and fur torn off his right front foot.

From what we could ascertain of the situation, Mickey was probably eating Sterling’s food and Sterling took a stop in exactly the wrong spot and stepped on Mickey. Sterling isn’t at all food aggressive and doesn’t seem to mind sharing with the dogs, so I have no reason to believe that it was aggressive or purposeful. Just a tiny dog at the wrong place at the wrong time.

After a tour of North Texas vets we finally got x-rays on Wednesday and determined that he did have some broken bones.

Broken right front foot toe.

Very broken left front leg

I was really hoping this would be an injury that could just be splinted for recovery, but alas it will require surgery. Since Mickey is a foster the rescue group will be utilizing a lower cost option, but it is still expensive. Mickey and I would be GREATLY appreciative of any donations made to his surgery cost. You can click here to make a tax deductible donation to the Urgent Animals of Fort Worth rescue group who are paying for the surgery. This is an amazing rescue group that purely focuses on getting the most urgent dogs and cats out of the Fort Worth shelter. Dogs that have respiratory infections and heartworms are the hardest to get adopted and often the first to get euthanized. Every dog we have fostered has been an Urgent dog. Mickey is also currently undergoing heartworm treatment.

Mickey came back home yesterday with leg splints while he waits for his surgery. All he wants out of life is for me to carry him around 24/7. He’s always liked being held, but even more so now. Sweet little guy.

Back home and ready to pass out. Poor little guy was tired!

Other, happier, news is that Sterling’s leg is looking MUCH better! A couple more weeks of stall rest and he should be back to regular turnout with his buddies and hopefully rideable soon after that.

Very little fluid left and the holes are healing nicely.