She's Doing Okay

Ever since Cora arrived two days after Christmas, rain or shine every morning I put on my bathrobe, slip into my shoes and jacket, and my gentle Cora and I go out as the sky is lightening; I stand and admire the bay while she sniffs around (a friend calls it "picking up her pee mail"), wags tails with the neighbor's dog, and does her morning business. The lights are on in a few houses and sometimes we can hear stirrings but we have our tiny street pretty much to ourselves. Then, I bag her poop, we go back inside and she has breakfast while I read my email. We enjoy our ten minutes of peaceful morning ritual.

Yesterday morning, just out of sight in the twilight, I heard Cora screeching in pain and charged over to find that she had been attacked by a pitbull who doesn't live in our neighborhood but was being babysat at a house nearby and was thoughtlessly let out unleashed. I won't go into all the details but I finally managed to make the dog let go of Cora's ear by a combination of shouting, swearing, hitting and choking it with its own collar. The babysitter arrived just in time for me to hand the pitbull to her and run after Cora, who fled home as soon as she was released. We rushed to the emergency vet with Cora's ear all torn and bleeding.

She's doing okay and she's glad to be home. The vet there took a careful, meticulous hour and a half to stitch together her ear while she was under anesthesia. She came home with pain meds, a drain in her neck and antibiotics, and we are hopeful that because she's young and strong, she will retain the ear, but we will love her even if she ends up lop-sided. The kind young vet even offered that with all the "feathers" Cora has around her ears it won't show much even if she does lose it.

I talked to the pitbull's babysitters and they are most apologetic and distressed; they also offered very responsibly to pay all the vet bills. I'm sure the pitbull had no track record of attacks, or they'd have been more careful. Nevertheless, I called the animal services department in my county and reported the incident in case there are ever any more involving this dog. The vet said I was damn lucky not to be bitten, myself, but I didn't think of that at the time and I'm glad I didn't.

I know that not all pitbulls are bad and this dog showed me no aggression, despite the beating it received at my hands, when I went to the house to tell them I was reporting the incident, but if you have a pitbull or one lives near you, please be careful and cautious. If you own one, don't let it out unleashed - you can never know if or when it will attack. They have been bred for centuries to bite and never, ever to let go. I am sad for my Cora, who is now timid about going outside and in a great deal of pain, but I am haunted by the thought that it might have happened to the aging yellow labrador who lives next door, or a child, or even a grownup.