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| Ruby |
I remember it well because it was the weekend of my birthday, early
August, a beautiful bluebird day, and I was spending the Saturday with a
good friend of mine skiing at a local resort. We’d had the most incredible run
of good weather, almost spring like. The snow was crisp on top and heavy
underfoot.
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| From casually walking along the ridge, to slide city! |
The hunter decided to take our wee Ruby (English
Springer, 2 years old at the time) for a hunt up in the valley for goat or
deer, whichever crossed his path first. Up the right hand side of the valley,
which gets little sun, they walked and walked and walked, for what seemed like
miles probably, with no sign of anything. Nice day for a walk luckily. As he
was making his way quietly across the ridge line glassing over the other side for
any animals having a lazy winter lunch in the sun, boots on snow, he felt his
foot start to slip out, the crusty snow top had become ice... He quickly had
his legs whipped out from underneath him, and had no chance of regaining his
footing. He tried repeatedly to use his rifle as an ice pick, but the ice was too hard, and the slide too fast. Poor Ruby (ever loyal) had obediently followed along, despite the
Hunter telling her to stay, she proceeded to slide down the hill at a million
miles an hour just meters above him! It must have been quite a sight! They slid
for a hundred meters or so, luckily (??) he saw a rose hip bush in his path and
was able to bring his slide to an abrupt halt by throwing himself into it,
ouch. Meanwhile, Ruby went flying over the top of him and slid a further 50
meters or so, her claws like little ice skates, providing her no grip whatsoever! She too, eventually came to a stop with the help of a thorny bush, although more by luck than choice!
It took some serious coaxing to get her to come out of the bush, she was so
shaken by her big slide!
Hunter and dog reunited after quite a
scare, the hunter checked Ruby over for any injuries, and she got the all
clear. He wasn’t quite so lucky… on inspection of his upper thigh he discovered
he’d left a few layers of skin on the ice! His trusty stubbies had failed him. And although the bush had saved him
from sliding further, it wasn't an entirely friendly shrub, the scratches
across both legs were evidence of that. Queue graphic photo... I guess at the
time it was numbed with the cold, the real extent of the injury wouldn’t make
itself clear until later in the day… the post-hunt shower…
I called the hunter on my way home from my
day in the snow to see if he wanted to catch up for a beer to compare stories
of our days adventures, blissfully unaware of what he’d been up to, and was
greeted with the words a hunter’s wife dreads; “Ruby and I did ourselves a wee
mischief today out hunting…”
Of course I fear the worst! Do we still have a wee
Ruby? Vet Bills? Broken bones? Rolled the truck? What kind of mischief!? He
filled me in on the basics, and I was somewhat relieved that it seemed no
permanent damage was done to either dog or hunter.
When I got home, poor Ruby was still
shaking on her beanbag (3 hours later!), eyes wide like her life had flashed
before her! The hunter was only slightly better, whiskey and adrenaline are an amazing cocktail for pain relief and story telling it would seem.
The wound was raw, but clean, right down to the meat. He was icing it, as much
as he could handle, but it was incredibly painful.
In the days following, we tried a number of
different dressings for the wound, unfortunately it was a bit of a trial and
error. One error we made was to put a fabric dressing on it… which had to be
removed in the shower because of course it stuck to the raw meat. I’ve never
seen a man drop to his knees in such pain, I thought he was going to pass out…
I was gently trying to remove it, slowly, slowly. But he insisted I rip it off like
a band-aid… I ripped and ran! After that (and a fair bit of googling and
consulting the pharmacist), we discovered the magic of ‘moist wound healing’.
Although pretty gross, it definitely worked! Basically, when you have an raw
open wound like that (like a burn), you cover it in a plastic shield (like a second skin
bandage), allow the shield to fill with the wound’s healing fluids (yes pus and
blood…) and VERY carefully change the shield daily, giving the wound a bit of
time in between to get some air. It’s smelly and revolting (you can thank me later for not providing any photos of the dressing changes), but works and is
much less painful than the alternative. It's also is less likely to leave a scar.
It took about a week of the expensive second skins, but once over the worst of
it, it healed extremely quickly.
You’re probably asking yourself, “why
didn’t he just go to the doctor!?”, and yes I suggested that to him. But we really didn’t think there was anything
a doctor could do that we couldn’t. It didn't need stitches, we had antiseptic
powder and the appropriate bandaging. We kept it clean, changed the dressing
regularly, watched for any signs of infection, and a week later, happy days, it
was well and truly looking a whole lot better. Lucky escape for both man and
dog. And no, he didn’t shoot anything that day, but what an experience! And
that my friends, is what we call, doing yourself a mischief!
