Exposed Skull!

We received a message with a photograph of a dog with a head injury – the wound looked big and bad enough for us to engage the services of a dog trapper to help us in catching him to take him to the vet.

The photograph that triggered a wave of panic

We staked out his regular feeding grounds for the past few days and finally tonight, with the help of a dog trapper, we caught him.

Huge head wound with blood flowing down his face

Such a sorry sight

Sedated so we could take him out of the cage and flush his wounds

At the vet, when the Dr and vet tech saw him, they just stared at us – in their many years on the job, they had never seen such an injury. His skull was exposed! In my 8 years of rescue work, I have never seen such an injury too – I can’t  imagine the pain and suffering he has been through. Whatever that had hit him would have hit so hard to have caused such severe damage. Imagine the unbearable pain he has been through for the past 1 week. If it was us, we would have fainted from the pain.

He was fearful and tried to struggle to escape so he had to be sedated in order to have his wound flushed. He has two wounds – the obvious one on his head and a small puncture hole on his left hip. The smaller hole had maggots burrowing inside and the hole, although small looking, was terribly deep.

I felt so sad when I looked into his eyes, fresh blood flowed down his face, and he kept licking away the blood. Why must street dogs suffer so much? His left eye was rather small from all the pain and blood flowing down  – we cant tell if his eye has been damaged but the head wound shows his skull exposed and when the vet lifted the skin, it was hollow inside. We were told that his muscles and tissue were gone as it was very badly infected, leaving a hollow in his head. Looking at him from the front, you can see his skull indented as a result of the hollow.

His forehead is indented.

The white part you see is his skull.

On Monday we will take him to Dr Ly of ARC but for now, he will be warded at another vet as Dr Ly doesn’t operate on Sundays. He will be on drip, strong antibiotics and pain killers. Tomorrow he will have a head xray to check if his skull has been fractured, together with other blood works.

We will continue to post updates on Facebook as and when we can. We are not sure if he will survive this, if he will suffer from brain damage, if his left eye has been blinded but for now, we just want him to be comfortable till we get a second opinion on his options.

To help with his vet bills, please email us at hopedogrescue@singnet.com.sg Please give us time to reply to your emails, we are overwhelmed by the number of dogs that we have rescued in the past 2 weeks, some whom are still warded at the vets.

We have named this brave boy, Champ.