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When Shwetal Dighe took his five-year-old Golden Retriever Buzo for what he thought would be a relaxing evening walk in the woods this summer, he could never have imagined how close to death his beloved dog would come.
“It’s our usual place, nothing out of the ordinary,” Shwetal, 50, recalls. “He was just wandering around among the trees, and suddenly I heard a loud cry. There weren’t any other animals around or anything, so I called out to him, and when he came he was absolutely covered in blood with a wound near his chest, which was pumping out quite a bit of blood.”
Shwetal, a general surgeon from Reigate, says that even with all his medical training, nothing could prepare him for the sight of his gentle golden retriever limping towards him, his chest soaked red. Buzo had apparently impaled himself.
“He couldn’t walk; he was limping towards me. When I touched the area, he was crying out in pain,” Shwetal says. “He must have chased after something and hit a branch which caused the wound.”
“I am used to the sight of blood, but it was a lot,” Shwetal says.
He stripped off his t-shirt and held it against the wound, which was at the top of Buzo’s front right leg. The wound was approximately 15cm in size. He then applied pressure as he headed to the nearest road as quickly as he could.
“I thought it had penetrated his chest wall. But thankfully, it hadn’t. It had just hit a large vessel which bled.”
“I carried him up the hill to the nearest road. I called my friend, who came with his car. He fetched my son Siddhansh from the house to sit with Buzo while I went back to get our own car to take him to the vet.”
With local practices shut for the evening, they called our out-of-hours Vets Now clinic in Sutton, where Buzo underwent two hours of emergency surgery.
“They put Buzo under general anaesthetic and took him to theatre where they, explored the wound, cleaned it all up from the debris, and stitched it. Luckily it all came together. They had to tie off a vein which had ruptured, but there was no damage to his chest wall.”
By then, Buzo had already lost a significant amount of blood. “Probably half a litre or something,” Shwetal says quietly. “If the bleeding hadn’t stopped, I thought I could have lost him.”
The family spent an anxious night waiting for news. “That night was quite terrifying, because we were waiting for the vet to call back saying it was all okay. They rang around three o’clock in the morning to tell us he had come through surgery.”
Buzo came home the next day and made a full recovery over eight weeks.
Our Principal Vet Sam King says:
Seeing your dog bleeding can be very distressing. Buzo had a large 15cm deep wound that penetrated through from the front of his elbow, into his armpit, and down to his pectoral chest muscles.
Buzo had complete tears to multiple muscles in his right front leg, and had completely severed a major vessel, hence the heavy bleed. Wounds of this size can cause permanent limb changes, and are open to deep infection.
Prior to surgical repair, I removed everything from fur, grass, mud and broken pieces of stick that were deep within Buzo’s leg. His surgery was lengthy, but all muscles were repaired and the bleed controlled.
A wound of this size always requires immediate veterinary attention, as these can lead to life threatening consequences if untreated. Buzo required immediate intravenous pain relief, antibiotics and went onto a high rate drip to try and replace his lost blood volume, and stabilise his blood pressure.
Do not hesitate to contact your closest vet if your pet has any wound that is large, deep or actively bleeding, or if there are puncture wounds over the abdomen or chest.
The ordeal brought back painful memories for the family, who suffered a terrible loss five years before when the family dog was killed.
“He was in a road traffic accident. The whole family saw it. My daughter Sanjana was just nine at the time, and she was absolutely shattered for probably six months. It was one of the most horrible experiences.”
That loss made Buzo’s accident even harder to bear. “Golden retrievers are so loving. To think of losing him like that was shocking and scary.” But this time, the outcome was different, and the family were overjoyed to bring him back home the next day,
Now fully recovered, Buzo is back to bounding around as if nothing happened. “He looks absolutely fine,” Shwetal smiles. “It was just nice to have him back. When he came home, it felt like our family was complete again.”
Reflecting on how close they came to losing him, Shwetal adds: “It was devastating even to imagine. It takes a very long time to recover from that kind of loss. That’s why we’re just so grateful. We nearly lost him, but he’s still here with us.”