Okuma is 14 months old, but has gone through more than most dogs ever will. She was playing in the yard, when her owner, Lance, heard her scream in pain and run into the house.
Lance got Okuma as a small puppy, and has trained her to go for help. He takes her fishing, and she can run the 5 miles to the nearest cabin to get help if he is ever hurt or stuck. She loves to go fishing with Lance and will get upset if he doesn’t take her with him. Apparently, she also loves gummy bears.
Obviously Lance loves his dog, so when she came running in, low to the ground, scrapes on her legs, and a bleeding nail, he took her to the vet right away.
“We have a good idea of what happened to our girl now upon further investigation of where she came running from. 100 yards behind our house through the woods our neighbours have 3 new Horses in a new pasture. Okuma had to have smelled them and decided to go say hello and was probably trampled,” Lance says on Okuma’s GoFundMe page. “She would never hurt a horse or chase one and probably only wanted to play (she always wants to play with everyone and anything) but the horses couldn’t have known, and acted like they should have to a animal running up to see them.”
At the vet, they discovered her tail had been broken at the base of her sacrum. She was in excruciating pain, so vet gave her some pain meds. The vet said to wait and see if she would recover. They went home, and the pain meds didn’t seem to help, and Lance could not get her to go to the bathroom.
Okuma refused to leave her owner’s side, and they spent the night with her head on his chest. Lance hoped that she would feel better in the morning, but things were worse. He took her out to try and go to the bathroom again, but she was in even more pain. He called the vet, and they said it would be 48-72 hours before the specialist would get back to them. Okuma couldn’t wait that long.
Lance turned to a facebook group of husky owners. He found someone at the Michigan State University Veterinary Medical Center who could help. He sent them the x-rays.
“Within minutes she came back on the line and told me that this was really bad she needed immediate medical attention since the fracture looks like it could have severed all her nerves that control her functions to use the bathroom and will need to be seen to determine if surgery could not only fix the fracture and take away the pain but restore any nerve damage,” Lance said on Okuma’s GoFundMe page.
Surgery was the only thing to do. If Lance decided against surgery, Okuma might have needed to be put down. He would do anything to save his dog.
Fortunately, the surgery was successful and Okuma is recovering, although it may take a while. You can follow Okuma’s recovery on her GoFundMe page.
