Against All Odds

Tyson is a just big “goofball,” according to Leslie, his owner. He loves to play, romp and give hugs, which is saying something since he’s a Rottweiler. Not even two years old, his family and his feline playmates, adore him. The cats are known to play with him even when he’s asleep, which doesn’t bother Tyson one bit.

But in early spring, Tyson began acting oddly. Instead of playful and energetic, he was lethargic, lost interest in food, began vomiting and had diarrhea. Leslie took him to her new vet (she had just moved) but none of the tests showed anything except an elevated white blood count, which indicated infection. The strange thing was, no infection could be found. Nevertheless, Tyson was placed on antibiotics and he did seem to get better.

A few weeks later, however, Leslie noticed an opening to the right of his anus. Because she lives in a rural area, she thought maybe a foxtail barb had embedded itself in his skin. So she treated it as such, cleansing and washing the area daily, but it never healed.

The vet was quite concerned because there was a lot of infection. It appeared that his anal gland had ruptured. Tyson’s scheduled neutering would have to be postponed. Leslie decided to get a second opinion with her vet of many years, Dr. Bob Hildreth. Dr. Bob confirmed the new vet’s diagnosis and performed the surgery.

He cleaned out the gland and made another hole for a drainage tube. Dr. Bob gave Leslie very strict instructions to put compresses on the surgical area three times per day, as well as to keep him on antibiotics.

Leslie did just that, following Dr. Bob’s instructions to the letter. But when she brought Tyson back for his follow up, the infection was worse! Now there were three ruptures, instead of two. Dr. Bob was completely stymied. “It just doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

Again, Dr. Bob put Tyson on antibiotics and sent him home. Hopefully, this round would heal the increasing infection, but it didn’t. Weeks and weeks of antibiotic use and Tyson’s rectal area continued to ooze pus.

Desperate, Leslie began soaking the dog in Epsom salts nightly. Finally, the infection eased. The amazing thing through it all was Tyson. He acted as he always did, roughhousing with Leslie’s Mastiff, Dalmatian and Jack Russell, not to mention his cat friends. Except for the constant licking of his anal area, nothing overtly indicated he was ill.

But Tyson was far from fine. Leslie came home one day to find that Tyson, a jumper, had once again catapulted from the backyard to the front yard fence. And that’s when Leslie saw it, something long and blue, about two inches in length, protruding from what appeared to be his rectum.

Leslie freaked out. As she walked toward Tyson, he walked away and the shaft extended another two inches. When Leslie and her partner, Mark, finally restrained Tyson, they discovered the blue shaft could easily be moved four inches without any complaint from Tyson, but any more than that, and he whimpered. She and Mark thought it looked like a fiberglass arrow. Had someone actually shot Leslie’s dog with an arrow?

Clearly, it was time to go back to the vet. Dr. Bob took an x-ray and was flabbergasted. There appeared to be a long object, about the diameter of a pencil lodged in Tyson’s existing wound—not his rectum. But even more incredible, the shaft was 11 inches long and shaped like a candy cane. It had pierced the dog’s colon, deflecting off his hip, resting inside his abdomen.

Tyson’s last yard jump had finally forced the shaft to move so that it protruded outside of his body. Now he needed surgery and it wasn’t going to be cheap. Leslie’s career in real estate had taken a nosedive. She had lost her house and her rental property. Money was tight as she figured out her next career path, but Tyson was part of the family. She just could not put him down because life had thrown her a curve.

Frantically, she placed an ad on Craigslist asking for help, and readers responded, advising Leslie of organizations that could help. That’s when she found The Mosby Foundation, literally at the last minute.

Between family and friends, Leslie had scraped together some of the money she needed for Tyson’s surgery. We received her plea the night before Tyson’s scheduled surgery. Immediately, we called her and said, “Absolutely we’ll help!” It was the last piece in a long haul to raise the funds she needed to help her big lovable dog. Overcome, Leslie began sobbing.

With so much hardship over the last couple of years, it was like a comforting shoulder to lean against when we said yes. Tyson had his surgery, but the actual results were nothing short of horrendous and astounding, so much so that Leslie couldn’t take it in when her vet gave her the news.

It was not an arrow. Worse, the still unidentified shaft had been shoved into the dog on purpose. “You mean someone drugged Tyson and inserted it?” Leslie said. Kindly, the vet said no and told her again what had happened. The ends, the vet told her, had been broken to rip him up.

“I just couldn’t understand it. How could that have happened? And why?” Leslie cried. All very good questions, but the final answer and the last piece of this horrible mystery presented itself in Leslie’s laundry room. There she happened to notice a blue plastic clothes hanger dangling from her portable clothesline.

Immediately, she retrieved the object that the vet removed from Tyson. Leslie laid one over the other. The candy cane shape was the elbow of the hanger. It was 11 inches of a perfect match. Now all the pieces fell in place.

This had happened at her former residence and she knew who had done this to her dog. Neighbors had told her about the woman, complained bitterly to each other about their pets that had been poisoned and the beer bottles thrown at their pets by this person. 

Tyson was just the latest victim of a vicious attack by a deranged woman’s hatred for animals, her twisted notion of “justice” when small conflicts arose between neighbors. Leslie now remembered Tyson’s response to the woman.

At one time, he had loved her, as Tyson loves everybody. But after he got sick, he either ran or bared his teeth at her, an action totally out of character for him. Leslie felt sick to her stomach that this woman had been in her house and had pretended to be her friend and an animal lover.

Dr. Bob said that in all his years of practice, he had never come across anything like this. “This is the beginning stage of a Jeffrey Dahmer.” It sends chills down our spine to contemplate such a horror, but we fear the good doctor is right.

Now safely in her new residence, she watched Tyson’s big, goofy face from his four feet by four feet crate, replaying the events from the last six months of his life. This lovely dog had never done anything to anyone except give hugs and love every minute of every day.

Now, the next two weeks of his life were critical. The clothes hanger had torn a whole in Tyson’s colon near his rectum about 8 inches long. The best thing to do was to confine Tyson, keep him on hefty antibiotics and special medication to further prevent infection. With time, luck and rest, the tear would repair itself.

Leslie has thanked us over and over for making Tyson’s new life possible. Honestly, we thought it was the least we could do. Tyson will continue to love, lick the faces of kitty cats and play hard with his doggie friends; that is, after his 38 staples are removed.

For the rest of his life, Tyson will be surrounded by the love of his family. He will warmly and genuinely continue to give out sloppy, wet kisses, voracious hugs and roughhouse with other big dogs.

In fact, Tyson didn’t even bother to wait for the nightmare to be over. In spite of everything, he just kept loving the people around him. Now that it is all over, Tyson’s future is bright. He’s healing beautifully, inside and out.

And that’s more than we can say about his perpetrator.

Note: Although Leslie is pursuing criminal action, laws for prosecuting animal cruelty are very strict. You almost have to catch the person in the act to get a conviction. In the meantime, Tyson’s perpetrator continues her self-made war against innocent animals.