Sunday, January 17, 2010

Our latest patient...


We must be terrible parents. We only had good intentions and we did everything right. Or maybe we just have bad dogs. I'm not sure which. But today we created an unexpected patient - Dyna. She's completely fine - just a little scraped up. Here's what happened...

We lowered the dinghy into the water and set off to check into the Vero Beach City Marina. They are super-friendly here and everyone at the office was asking about our dog team. We got the latest schedule for the free GoLine shuttle bus that takes us anywhere around the area. What an incredible feature for this place. It gives cruisers so many options for shopping, projects, or just playing.

After checking in, we checked out the new dog park right next to the marina. This is a Vero Beach off-leash park set up right along the water - about 50 yards from where our boat is located. There were about 20 different dogs of all sizes and shapes and Dylan and Dyna had a great time running around and playing.

Then Dyna found the path to the water...

In and out, over and over, both dogs swam and had a grand time. It had been a long time since either had gone swimming and they loved it. All of a sudden we noticed that Dyna had disappeared. We knew she was probably in the water so we started searching for her. We found her in the middle of the mangroves, unsure how to get back to the deeper water. This was this Maine girl's first time ever seeing mangroves and she just didn't understand them.  She finally undid herself and continued to play and have fun.

Back to the marina for a quick washing off and back into the dinghy for a ride back to the boat. Then we saw it - blood on the side of the dinghy. Back on the boat, Dyna got a full EMT primary and secondary assessment. She had a shallow cut on her left rear leg, an abrasion on her front left paw, and a variety of scrapes on her left thigh - all from the mangroves.

We used anti-bacterial cremes on our patient and created some custom bandages that she couldn't easily remove. She's resting comfortably.

Personally, I don't think she even knows that she was injured.

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