Tear

When our dog Oogy was about ten weeks old and weighed 20 pounds he was tied to a stake and used as bait for a Pit Bull. The left side of his face including most of his ear was torn off. He was bitten so hard a piece of his lower jaw was crushed. Afterward, he was thrown into a cage and left to bleed to death. He was found by police when they raided the facility and taken to an emergency service operating out of Ardmore Animal Hospital, in a suburb of Philadelphia. There, Diane Klein, the Office’s Director of Operations, simply refused to allow the dog to die. Dr. James Bianco, the head of the hospital, operated for several hours to staunch the bleeding, replace the lost blood, and suture the gaping meat that Oogy’s face had become. With the help of everyone on the staff somehow, beyond any calculation of the odds, Oogy survived.

Sad story

My name is Bailey and, as you can see from my picture, I am a gorgeous, solid black, purebred German Shepherd. I was 18 months old when I arrived at the shelter and adoption facility where I live.

Early this year, I was lying on my side in my quarters with my left front paw extended under the fence separating me from the adjacent run. Shockingly, my paw was suddenly grabbed by a dog in the next enclosure. He and his kennel mate pulled my entire leg through this narrow space and, over the next several minutes, tore it off.

My caretaker came running across the shelter grounds at the sounds of my extreme fear, suffering and agony. She managed to restrain the other two dogs and then applied a tourniquet and compresses to my jagged wound in an effort to stop the hemorrhaging. I was driven at high speed across Dallas to a veterinarian hospital, barely clinging to life. The vet, her husband, an orthopedic veterinarian, and other wonderful and caring hospital staff members immediately initiated emergency procedures to stop my bleeding and prepare me for my first surgery. A week later, I underwent a second surgical procedure to combat infection and to use skin grafts from other parts of my body to cover my extensive wounds. I spent more than a month at their hospital where I was constantly told what a wonderful dog I am and how important it was for me to survive.