Bobcats are BAD

Last October, Gary was helping around the house.  He had walked the dog, then tied her up in the front yard where she likes to bask in the sun.  He was cleaning the kitchen.  The world is good when a husband cooks breakfast and then cleans the kitchen.  I decide to take a shower.  While I am in there, in barges Gary and he starts saying I need your help.  After me telling him I was obviously busy, he starts screaming “Stella is dead!” over and over.  I get out of the shower and throw on a housecoat, and follow him to the hedge.  There lay my baby, eyes wide open, tongue hanging to the side of her mouth, and she had poop on her lower body.  I realized she was indeed dead. 

Screaming hysterically, while Gary was throwing up, I picked her up and ran into the house, sat on the sofa and tried to find a pulse, or any indication she was breathing.  Poop continued to ooze out her butt. While sobbing loudly, I called Angie and sobbed the situation.  She drove over immediately, and we headed to the vet.  We both thought she was dead and we wanted to get her cremated because I was leaving for Oklahoma in a few days and I wanted to bury her with my Dad (he has a crypt type headstone with an urn built in for her) while I was there.

As we are going out to her car, the dog started gasping and moving.  Angie stopped at every intersection with a stop sign or red light, then drove thru when the coast was clear.  The vet (Angie’s next door neighbor and also Margie Storey’s cousin) saw her immediately and said she was covered with puncture wounds and he’d go treat her. 

Since I am so intelligent, I called Gary (he didn’t go with us to the vet, he was actually too upset to do anything) and told him to go outside and look for a snake.  He does, then calls back and tells me the only thing outside was a bobcat that was sitting exactly where I had picked up Stella… just inside the hedge. 

While waiting for the vet, Angie told me to go home. I had gotten out of the shower, hair wet, in only a housecoat, and was covered in blood and dog poop.  I had never seen the blood that was coming out of Stella.  I ran home, got cleaned up and dashed back.

When the vet came back in, I told him about the bobcat. He said he knew it wasn’t a snake bite, and since this was his second bobcat attack this week, he just presumed I was aware that they had been going in our neighborhood for a while.  WTF?  He said Stella had 22 puncture wounds, and he had done the best he could.  She had glue on most of them, but there were several places that were stitched closed.  He also said he did not know if she would make it or not.  Because he lives only four blocks away, he was going to let me take her home with the promise that I would call him anytime day or night on his personal cell phone if she got worse.  I was to return the next day.  The daily routine went on for a while.  She was put on IV’s because her throat was so swollen she couldn’t swallow.  After a few days she started drinking, and I started force feeding her. 

Her neck kept getting bigger, and blood and gunk kept oozing out of her neck area.  My primary care doctor, Dr. Moolamalla told me to put blue food coloring in her water and see if it came out that area that was oozing. 

I did it, and sure enough, the gunk turned blue.  I told Travis what I had done, and he  said he was never trained to do the type of surgery that might save her, but he would try if I understood there were no guarantees.  He did a surgery on her, and again let me take her home.  Anyway, long story short…it saved her life. 

All went well thru December, then the first of January, I was going to get her groomed and I discovered a pimple like thing when I was taking off her dog collar. I touched it and it spewed puss and blood.  Back to Travis.  It was a really deep infection, but he removed it via a small surgery, and she was given meds and again I got to take her home.  Three weeks later, and it was healed.

She is now incontinent if she is deeply asleep, terrified of cats (All except Angie’s that she’s always been around), will not walk with Gary without a leash on, is very clingy, almost deaf, and terrified of strange sounds.  She hides a lot.  It was the best $2200 I ever spent.  The only reason it was that cheap was because Travis didn’t put her in the doggie hospital.
The various stages of this whole ordeal.... they were awful.  The hardest thing for me to do was force feed her.  She would fight it, then finally just let me do it.  Sometimes I would just start crying, causeI didn't want her to die but knew it was painful for me to force the food and med into her.  She'd then raise up and give me a few licks on the face.  I swear, they know when you're upset.  

As I type this, she is snoozing beside me.  Yes, she wet her bed last night…. You gotta go with the flow.  Everything in my house is covered with crib protector sheets from Walmart’s baby section.  Gary is good with everything I’ve done for this dog.  We both think of her as our baby…. Always have always will.  But, we will never have another dog.  She can never be replaced.

If you have a strong stomach, her are a few photos of her injuries.

This is a picture of one of the bobcat's that was in the area.  There are many, so I am not sure this is the one.... but there are still attacks going on as of Feb. 2016.