PSA: No Choke Collars, Please!

Hey everyone! Didja think I left the country? I'm still here hangin' out in Willis. C got a new job and apparently my blog has slipped even lower on the priority list. Go figure! I'm not believin' it either!

So this post is kind of a combination "yeah I'm still here" and "Hey! Merry Christmas!" and a public service announcement. Some of you already know this, but, don't put "choke" collars on your dogs! Dr. Pat says only put a choke collar on a dog if it's attached to a leash, and a human is on the other end of the leash, and that's very good advice! We had a freak accident happen at our house because of a choke collar, and it coulda turned out a lot worse than it did...like Zara and I could be dead! Can't get much worse than that.

We don't wear collars anymore; we're country dogs! (We're microchipped in case we get lost and we don't go off the property anyway.) Here's the collar that Zara was wearing that got us into trouble. Seems obvious that something called a choke collar could be problematic!

Zara and I are the same age (two and a half) which figures since we're littermates. Sometimes Zara acts like an old lady and I have to pester her to get her to play with me. I give her a few jabs on the neck and usually that gets her attention.

Well, on November 1st that got me in big trouble. When I jabbed her, somehow my lower jaw slipped under her choke chain behind my big canine teeth, and then I couldn't get it out! We were stuck together! She thought I was messin' with her, and I thought somehow the crazy beyatch had trapped me! We were jumpin' and snappin' and howlin' and freakin' out! We got the chain twisted around even tighter so Zara was choking and my jaw was hurting so bad I thought my eyes might pop out!

Unfortunately at the time no one was thinking much about documentation, so we don't have any pictures of the event.

When C came runnin' out she didn't make the situation much better by panicking. She had both her hands in my mouth tryin' to work that choke chain loose, and I don't really remember doing it, but I guess I musta bit through her right index finger. All we knew was suddenly she went in the house and was gone for awhile. Turns out she called 911 and pretty soon some paramedics and firemen came to help us. C went to the ER in an ambulance and the firemen cut Zara's chain with boltcutters and freed us. We were pretty sore for awhile, but we get over stuff quick and it was back to normal for us!

Humans don't bounce back so fast. Two days later C had surgery because a couple of the bites got infected. There was that partial amputation, and then a whole buncha little bites. The doc said dog bites can get infected easily, but they're not as bad as cat bites!! (Anyone knows cats are nastier than dogs!) But guess what's the worst kind of bite? Human!!! Human mouths are really germy! So, again, coulda been worse, like maybe if C bit me insteada the other way around. So Dr. Shah put a pin in C's index finger, removed the fingernail, and stitched up that finger and the ring finger. It's been a learning experience for C. She's learned how to eat left-handed, type with nine fingers, and sleep with her hand elevated.

So, no choke collars please!

And all you dogs and humans have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Woof woof!