The Week that Was...

Warning, long post ahead...

Last week started off well. Rob's cousin was staying with us and we all decided to go for a walk with the dog on Wednesday afternoon. Got down to the waterhole and as we approached we could see another dog and its owner coming from the opposite direction. Our dog is a lab, just over two. The other dog was a staffy/Australian bulldog cross, also about two. Both dogs were about the same size. They had a great time playing around while we were all talking. Then the play started to get a bit rough. The other dog knocked TJ into the waterhole a couple of times. TJ likes to go wading in the waterhole, but doesn't like to get his whole body in, so by the time he came out of the waterhole the second time, he wasn't very happy. He growled at the other dog, which then decided to attack. He latched on around TJ's ear and wouldn't let go. TJ started squealing so Rob jumped in to protect his dog. Rob tried to grab TJ by the collar, but it came off, so he called out to his cousin to give him a hand. James tried to help but the other dog bit him. The other owner was telling us to leave the dogs alone, that they would sort it out between them, and in the end the boys did have to stop as they couldn't get them apart. The dogs stopped fighting pretty quickly, but by that time James had gone white and was shaking, so I put the collar back on TJ and we got out of there as quickly as we could. We had to walk back to the far end of the park to get to the main road, with James holding his hand to his chest the whole time.

The doctor at the nearby surgery cleaned up James' wounds (two bites to the right hand and one to the left) and bound his right hand, but he wasn't interested in making any small talk with James, and James felt like he was just going through the motions. Rob and I had plans to go to the moonlight cinema in the botanical gardens for an early Valentine's day celebration but were reluctant to leave James on his own. In the end he persuaded us to go, but I made him up a couple of meals to microwave while we were out, so he wouldn't have to do too much for himself.

On Thursday James went back to the doctor to have his dressing changed. He saw a different doctor, who immediately wrote out a referral letter and sent him off to the hospital. While there he had his right hand completely cleaned out, bandaged up and had his arm put in a sling.

On Friday I rang to make an appointment for TJ to go to the vet on Saturday. His wound was just below his ear canal but it was hard to see as it was covered with fur. We'd been spraying Betadine on the area to start with, but he was now growling at us if we tried to get anywhere near it. James went back to the hospital again to have his dressing changed. They suspected he might have some broken bones in his hand, but it was too swollen to tell. He came out with his hand splinted and in an even bigger bandage. When we came home on Friday night TJ came running up to greet us as he usually does, but everytime his ear made contact with one of us he squealed, so we were relieved we already had an appointment at the vets in the morning.

TJ had to be sedated at the vet's before she could get anywhere near his ear. She had to cut away all the fur around the wound. You could actually see the teeth marks from the other dog. He had a mild to moderate infection so she cleaned it all up, gave him some anti-inflamatory and antibiotic shots and sent us home with some antibiotics. It wasn't until after we finished at the vet that I realised how stressed I'd been feeling for most of the week. Felt so relieved that TJ was on the mend. Got to the gym on Saturday afternoon and had a great deadlift workout, then went out for dinner at Cafe Italia in Lygon St with Jo Rogers, Kerry from Adelaide, and Eddie and Diana from Next Generation supplements. It was nice to relax and talk bodybuilding for the evening, then it was up early the next morning to head off to the Get Ready seminar...