Name: Ernie
Species: Canine
Estimated Birthday: 5/31/2013
Sex: Neutered Male
A recent addition to the CARE program has touched the hearts of many. Ernie was witnessed being run over on March 30, 2014. He was on Highway 12 in Gadsden County near the Napa Store when a truck hit him, full force. The driver of the truck kept going, but a witness stopped to lend the little dog assistance. The dog is a Corgi mix, black and tan. He was an intact male dog estimated to be about 10 months old. The Good Sam immediately brought him to Northwood Animal Hospital for emergency treatment.
The dog, now named Ernie, was started on IV fluids and pain control to address shock and pain from what we thought at first was 2 broken back legs. He had also had the tip of his right ear torn off in the incident, but that was the least of his injuries. Once Ernie was stable, radiographs were taken of his body. The extent of his injuries was staggering. He had a fractures of his left tibia and fibula (bones below his knee); fracture of his right femur (the big bone leading up to the pelvis), his right humerus was shattered into 3 pieces at the elbow, and a chunk of bone on his left elbow was broken off. The truck had broken every leg Ernie had!
Thankfully, Ernie showed no signs of serious head trauma or internal bleeding. Even with the multitude of fractures he suffered from and the amount of pain he had to be in, Ernie was a love. He wagged his tail every time anyone came to his cage.
Just the surgeries required to repair his broken limbs was going to cost about $6,000. Factor in hospitalization, medications, treating his hook worm infestation and vaccines, and Ernie’s care would end up costing about $8,000. We decided he was well worth it. Ernie had his first surgery on April 3rd to fix the trickiest fracture (right distal humeral condyle was broken into 3 pieces). It took 3 hours of surgery just to repair that fracture. His left rear leg was casted at the same time as those fractures were amenable to this type of repair. The next day he was anesthetized again to repair his right femur fracture (IM pin placed) and his left olecranon fracture (cross pinning of the broken bone). He was also neutered during this surgery. This surgery also took 3 hours.
Ernie still has a few pins in one leg, but he is running around like nothing ever happened to him. What a guy! Ernie is far enough along in his progress that we are now ready to start showing him to potential adopters.