When Coco was recently attacked by another dog her family rushed her to our Carine clinic for emergency treatment. Her family tells her story in this heartfelt thank you letter to the team at Vetwest Carine.
“This is Coco.
On Monday afternoon while walking home from the dog park on a leash with our son Daniel (13) she was suddenly attacked by a very big dog that picked Coco up in its mouth and shook her like a toy. Our son wrapped his body around Coco to prevent a second attack and received superficial cuts, scratches and bruising to his face, neck and hands. Everyone, including the owner of the big dog were traumatised by the events.
Coco received late evening attention at Vetwest Carine from Dr Tess Basford and our son saw a Doctor in Joondalup. Coco was scheduled for surgery to clean and stitch the wounds on Tuesday. What was discovered during this procedure was that one tooth had come up through the abdomen, through the intestines and one third of the way through the other side of Coco.
In what can only be described as an extreme effort, two veterinary surgeons led by Dr Jessica Moore-Jones with Dr Michael Ng and two veterinary nurses, put her back together in a five and a half hour mammoth operation. Five ‘off site’ consulting veterinary surgeons provided their experience and advice (via photographs) on treating the damage to the intestines. Much of the repair work had to be done by working from the inside out.
Some of you reading this may have had your pet appointments rescheduled or relocated to enable the Doctors to stay scrubbed up all day. We thank you for your understanding and patience.
Although it is not certain that everything is going to proceed without complications, as of today (the day after the operation) Coco is walking around (carefully), wagging her tail (tentatively) eating small bland meals (enthusiastically) and learning to cope with life in a head cone (not very happily). So right now things look promising.
The owner of the big dog (previously a rescue dog) is going to muzzle it in future.
We wish to thank everyone involved with Coco’s surgery very much, including those of you who had to reschedule and reorganise things to make it all possible. And a very big thank you to the Doctors at Vetwest who worked so hard to do such long, complex and intricate surgery.
With thanks,
Graham, Emilia, Daniel and Coco”
