Target Practice
Filed under: Real Life Stories | Tags: adoption, animal, animal care, Buckshot, canine, dog, Pets, rescue, skin, veterinary, x-ray |
A few years ago, a woman brought her new dog in for an exam. She felt a bunch of tiny bumps all over the dogs body that she hadn’t noticed before adopting him. At first we thought they were little cysts, but they were much harder and too small to try and aspirated and get any cells out of them for a cytology. The doctor suggested an x-ray.
After the film was developed, myself and the other technician I was working with looked at the x-ray confused- all the areas where there were bumps were clear, which usually means there’s some sort of metal the the x-ray beam cannot penetrate. We showed it to the doctor, and he didn’t look shocked.
“I thought it might come out like this,” he said.
“What is it?” We asked
“Buckshot. Basically, someone probably used the dog as target practice at some point in its life. It must have been at a far enough distance from the dog to not severely injure him, but just get stuck under the subcutaneous skin layer.”
To this day, it still baffles my mind that someone could do something so cruel, so hurtful, so…so inhumane to a poor innocent animal.
And then people wonder why some dogs turn vicious. I’m glad this dog finally found a good home.
after re-reading my post i realized i didn’t mention how many we saw on the x-ray- it was close to 30. as much as i would love to think it was an accident, considering the quantity seen in the x-ray the odds of that are very, very slim.
It might not have been target practice, it might have been an accident. I once shot a neighbor’s dog by accident. The dog probably thought it had been stung by a bee because he did yelp, but it was too far away for the pellet gun I was using for target practice to really hurt him. I called the little guy back and checked him out and there wasn’t even any blood. I’ve felt bad about it all my life, but there are accidents.
It would be nice to think that it is an accident….But sadly that is often not the case.
That is truly terrible- what a sad story. I will never understand how anyone could be so cruel to an innocent dog either…they want nothing but love.
Our Scarlett came from a pretty bad situation and though she was never shot at, her signs of abuse are still obvious. She has lots of scars, is still a bit underdeveloped and has lots of emotional scars. Thankfully she’s getting better day by day and I hope the same is true for this pup!!