Jeb, aka Big Guy, Handsome, Buddy was dropped off with a severe older leg fracture around the first of the year at a night box at a local NC animal control station with a high kill rate. I'm not exactly sure where those statistics are captured (certainly not anywhere on the county websites), but I believe it. There are lots of hunters in this area with all kinds of hounds and, if a dog don't hunt, some of 'em'll drop 'em off, figuring that, when their time runs out, the county can handle the killin' part.
We're not sure what Jeb's story really is beyond finding pellets in the vicinity of the fracture on the X-rays, but we all know of the hunters that have called looking for "dawgs" to hunt boar. While ridgebacks are hounds with a decent prey drive, they above all have a preference for big cats and pack hunting, so it's entirely possible Jeb wasn't getting the job done with possum or birds or boar. But, why shoot him?
So, instead it may be more plausible that he was mistaken for a deer (season just ended here)...
Or maybe he got lost awhile back and had been scavenging some farmer's chickens and got shot, someone found him limping around a few weeks later and dropped him off.
The humanist in me prefers the second scenario, but the realist in me questions why drop him at night?
In any case, he was shot with probably a 20 gauge shotgun in his right flank and it must have been close enough to have enough of an impact to create a very serious fracture. He's adapted fairly well to it (except for the pain) and can get around well enough on the other three legs to take care of business. It may be possible to pin it, but worst case, it will need to be amputated.
There are also shot scars and an embedded pellet on his left side and his rear flanks are characteristic of severe starvation, except for the awful swelling in the fractured leg.
But I digress... So, a Bladen County "shelter friend" gets contacted by whoever she gets contacted by, fosters him for for a couple of days, contacts my rescue organization who ask me yesterday if I have time to check him out since I am closest (under an hour away). When I get there, Krista lays out what they know and what his care has been since he was turned in. Unfortunately, he wasn't prescribed any pain meds until just last week, nor was he generically wormed (only tapeworms). Good news is he is heartworm and erlichia negative.
An "angel" had covered his earlier care and they were going to move him up to Vermont after another "angel", Lynne Swanson DVM of Safe Harbor Farm spay/neuter clinic, took care of neutering and what they thought would be amputation last weekend. Then, when the X-ray offered a glimmer of hope that maybe the leg could be saved and at least be partially functional, Dr. Swanson found another vet with orthopedic expertise who agreed to try the repair.
By now, they've eaten up all the "angel's" donation and have decided he won't/can't go to Vermont but unfortunately, his pre-surgery bloodwork revealed that his red blood cell count was very low, so surgery had to be postponed until it could be raised. That was a week ago, so I took him to Dr. Nusbaum today to have it rechecked and it's still too low. So now he's on B-12 juice, Clavamox (infection in the fracture area), Zubrin (pain and swelling in the fracture area), Panacur (parasites draining RBC) and nowhere near strong enough tramadol (PAIN, PAIN, PAIN).
I'm going to try and make a recording of his piercing cries when the meds aren't kicking in fast enough - he will stand in position until he can't stand anymore, then finally drop to the bed and fall into a troubled half-sleep. He can't speak, but his heart-wrenching cries speak volumes about how much he's hurting.
Oh, to have the satisfaction of hurting he/she who did this to him. Call me old-fashioned in a sense, because I have such a difficult time believing a woman could do this...
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