We got a call from our regular pet transport on a weekend morning asking for help on behalf of a Muslim lady H who had been feeding a stray dog at her industrial area workplace. Skinny suffered a hit from a big wooden stick by a worker a week or two ago, and his eye was now red and swollen. H wanted to help Skinny seek medical help urgently but was unable to get Skinny into the carrier.
H told us that Skinny used to stay inside the compound of her workplace but a pack of four dogs from a neighboring factory that closed down seized his territory and since then, he has been staying on the streets.
Upon reaching the coffeeshop with H’s directions, we went around the coffeeshop but could not locate Skinny. We checked with the drinks stallholder but he too said that while Skinny would usually be sleeping under his van, but there he had not seen him that day.
H said Skinny might also be sleeping under the trailers parked along the roads outside and we circled the area to continue looking for him. Thankfully, he was located in no time! We saw him resting under a long trailer and managed to lure him out with food. There were some dried up wounds on his forehead, luckily they were just superficial and already healing. But his left eyeball was ruptured and infected, to the extent he could not close his eye. We had to get him to the vet asap.
After Skinny ate some food, we were still unable to lure him into the carrier. However, when we detoured to another coffeeshop to buy some more food to try our luck and came back a second time, we were lucky to be able to loop his neck this time round. Skinny of course put up a struggle as he did not know what was going on and was scared stiff. We took some time to calm Skinny down, slowly talked to him and coaxed him. He was a rather friendly boy but being a stray, it was usual for them to be cautious of strangers and we were just meeting him for the very first time. Nonetheless, he was a very good boy and not exactly snappy. After calming him down, we managed to get him into the carrier.
Over at the clinic, the vet confirmed our suspicions that Skinny’s left eyeball needed to be removed. However, his eye was too badly infected and Skinny was prescribed medicated eyedrops to bring down the swelling first. When we visited Skinny one day after he was warded, the swelling has indeed subsided quite a fair bit and the vet was monitoring him closely to decide when to operate on him, which would be in a day or two. The clinic staff also told us that he was a very big eater!
Skinny has just been discharged after his eye operation, and despite his condition, we still saw a smile on him when we visited him. Skinny is a happy boy who deserves so much more. Many a time, we know these dogs are homeless through no fault of theirs. And they are so often misunderstood as the aggressively territorial creatures portrayed on media. This is why our sanctuary NANAS caters mainly for mongrels, though we do have a few rescued pedigrees residing in there too.
1 comment:
Poor Dog!
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