Within days of Jaspar’s rescue, just a lane away from Jaspar’s factory, another dog was badly injured in yet another dogfight. Although not as life threatening as Jaspar’s, as the infection had not yet spread to his blood, this little puppy’s wound was MUCH deeper.
Helpless Fudge
I recall watching him grow up, running across the road dangerously, chasing and playing with his sister, oblivious to the traffic and danger around them. They were less than 3 months old then. Even at that tiny age, he protected his sister from the bigger dogs and would bark and chase them away when they came near her. Interestingly, the big dogs would back off and leave them alone, quite an amusing sight actually! However, just 6 months later, Fudge lost his sister in an accident. This was a month ago. The amount of hardship he has experienced in his 10 short months of life is something that none of our blessed pets would ever experience in their entire lifetimes.
This time, we saw Fudge while on our regular feeds, with a huge hole on his back, just like Jaspar. We didn’t have our dog carrier at that time, and could not help him then. However, I returned to the factory the next morning and spent 2 hours speaking with the workers and searching for him. Some workers told me that the dog had died, while others told me that he was asleep somewhere and would only appear in the evening. Like déjà vu, I left my carrier and leash with the workers and told them to call me when they spotted the injured dog. I then headed to the vet to visit Jaspar.
Hardly half an hour into my visit, the workers called to tell me they had the injured dog in the carrier and I rushed back to the industrial site. The overpowering stench of rotting flesh filled the air once again as I approached the carrier. With the heat and humidity, the smell was magnified. I wasn’t sure if it was the smell, the situation of seeing two dogs with such bad maggot-infested wounds within a week, my tiredness or the fact that I have been terribly worried about chalking up high vet bills, but I suddenly felt overwhelmingly nauseated.
Finally managed to get Fudge into the carrier
Believe it or not, but these workers are the unsung angels of our street dogs
Agonizing pain
A horrendous sight
Fudge had a huge wound on the left of his back, rather similar to Jaspar’s. From my years of experience working with street dogs, I have observed that dog fights are common when a female dog is in heat. We tend to see more injuries on dogs. In my opinion, this is one of the saddest sights working with street dogs; watching up to 10 males dogs literally take turns on one female dog, not unlike gang rape. Of course the alpha male gets to mate first, and the lower-ranked dogs fight it out. This is when they get their injuries.
In the safety of the clinic
Our volunteer offering comfort and assurance to Fudge
In Fudge’s factory, there are 3 more dogs: 1 mommy dog, her 4-month-old male puppy and an adult male. We hope to sterilize all of them by next week. Please support our Spay It Forward program and help fund the sterilizations.
At the vet, Fudge was calm most of the time. He never tried to bite, although he didn’t like the muzzle and kept trying to take it off. There was such great fear in his eyes; fear of being in a new environment and possibly the severity of the pain. As two vet techs picked out maggots from his wound, he cried softly. His low whimpers made me sad. All this while, Jaspar lay quietly in his cage, looking at Fudge’s similar ordeal.
The look of extreme fear in those eyes
Trying our best to assure and comfort him
If only there is a way that we can make him feel better
Imagine your own dog at the vet, hurt or injured. While your pet has you to love, hug and kiss, these stray puppies / dogs have families wiped out, sometimes within months of each other. They have nowhere to call home, no one to love, comfort or reassure them. Us rescuing them is as close to experiencing love or kindness as they’ll ever get. What’s worse, this experience of love will be short-lived, because we will have to return them to the factories as soon as their wounds heal, unless some big-hearted family offers to adopt them and give them a permanent home.
A blood test was carried out and it showed that he had ehrlichia. His red blood count was low from the loss of blood, while his white blood count was high from the infection. His situation was not life threatening like Jaspar’s, but this puppy’s wound was a whole lot deeper. The maggots had literally created tunnels under his skin. The doctor mentioned that she would need to sedate him to cut away the dead flesh.
Apart from ehrlichia, he was healthy enough to be sedated. This would also make the cleaning of his wound easier for the technicians and a lot less painful and torturous for Fudge. He soon fell into a deep slumber, possibly the first proper slumber he has ever had. Street dogs seldom get proper sleep or rest, for fear of being attacked, hit by oncoming vehicles or other dangers. Often, when they are rescued, they literally sleep for days and weeks on end, just to catch up on the years of sleep deprivation. You would think they were sedated daily!
After he was sedated, two vet techs quickly started work on Fudge’s wound, pulling out a few hundred maggots over the next two hours. Had we not saved Fudge, he would eventually have died from septic shock (septicemia) or the horrible flesh eating worms would have claimed him.
He would have died a slow death had we gotten to him any later
Finally sedated
Removing maggots from the wound
That's how deep his wound is
Doing all we can for Fudge
Now all we can do is pray that Fudge pulls through
A total of 3 kidney dishes of maggots extracted from Fudge
Recently, I seem to be seeing more dogs with such huge maggot-infested wounds, and am starting to feel nauseated by the sight and smell of them. It’s simply too much to bear within a few short days of Jaspar’s rescue. We have been trying to cut down on our rescue work as we have chalked up a huge bill with the vets but how do we say no to them when, often, we know that we are their only hope?
Please consider making a donation so that we may continue saving and helping the dogs who need us. No animal deserves to live this way.
