Diesel

Everyone enjoys taking their dog for a walk in the sun, which is exactly what I was doing with my dog on a seemingly normal Friday………. until it turned into a disaster.

As a veterinary nurse at Cogges, I (Sam) should be able to keep a cool head in the face of an emergency, but when it's your own dog it's a different story. My border collie Diesel was taking his normal dip in the river; he climbed out and immediately lifted his leg up as if he was injured. I didn't think much of it initially as he is fairly accident prone and I was not, therefore, prepared for the amount of blood I could see covering his paw.

After examining his pads I could see they were all fine, so I looked further up his leg. I moved away some hair above his main pad and saw, to my horror, that a small artery must have been severed as blood was pumping out of the wound. I quickly applied direct pressure with my fingers and called my husband to come and collect us.

I knew I couldn't walk along with my hand over his leg, so I had to think of something to use as a tourniquet to stem the bleeding. After riffling through my pockets and finding nothing, I had the bright idea of using one of my socks. I tied this very tightly around his leg and it worked very effectively. I managed to get him to follow me to the car and made tracks to get to the vets.

Once at work I called one of the vets who very kindly left home straight away to help me. In the meantime, Lisa (our head nurse) and I examined the wound. When the vet arrived, we sedated Diesel and removed the tourniquet. Unfortunately the bleeding started again and Diesel went into hypovolaemic shock which can be life threatening. To rectify this we placed him on intravenous fluids and continued to clip, clean and eventually suture the wound.

Diesel recovered very well from his ordeal and after a few dressing changes and strict rest (which he did not enjoy, I might add), he is back to his normal self, much to my whole-hearted relief.