Poor Mr. Pup

We've had our little Yorkie for just over 10 years.  He's been very much a part of our family all these years.  My in-laws bred Yorkies for a short time and he's one of the pups from the last litter.  He's pretty special.

Early Wednesday morning, Foster had to go out to do his business.  Dan got up and let him out.  Foster decided to take his time.  Dan waited.  And waited.  And waited.  20 minutes later, Dan woke me up in a panic telling me Foster had not come back yet.  This is very uncharacteristic of our little pup.

I went outside and whistled for him.  Almost immediately he came running to the house--from the direction of the canola field.  He was soaking wet and had dirt all over him.  Dan began scolding him for playing out in the wet grass/canola field, but that's when we saw his face.  The poor dog's eye was completely extended out.  Blood was oozing out of the eye and his snout appeared to have been bitten too.  But the sight of that eye....we were both certain we were going to lose our dog.

Meanwhile (it's about 4 a.m. now) Dan decided to call his mom.  She knows a lot about dogs and would have a better idea what we could do for him.  After 1 ring she picked up.  We weighed the options of bringing him to the vet as opposed to keeping him home.  We even debated on the option of a possible surgery as opposed to putting him down.

It was decided to wait until morning.  So we took Mr. Pup and put him on our bed with us.  There we stayed until morning--neither of us getting much sleep.  And the poor dog--he couldn't close his eyes because his whole eye had been pulled out and the eye lid could not close.  He was incredibly restless.  But he wanted to stay by us and we took that as a good sign.

In the morning we assessed him again.  In those couple of hours, the eye, while still bleeding, had pulled itself back into his head.  This was a huge relief!  We decided not to take him to the vet.  Those costs would have been astronomical.  My in-laws called, and then later dropped by with a Take-10 box of Tim Hortons coffee.  Very much appreciated!!  They took a look at Foster who had certainly lost all his confidence and was determined to stay right by Dan.  But he barked and went to see my in-laws when they showed up so that also was a relief.  Foster is a big fan of them.

We don't know what he got into a fight with--possibly a coyote.  Or, it could have been something more his size like a muskrat.  We simply don't know and are still guessing. 

Today Foster is doing great.  The bleeding stopped mid-day Wednesday.  His eye is crusted over and we are rather assuming he has lost the sight in his eye.  That is OK.  We still have our dog and we're all feeling pretty thankful for that.