Poor Ringo

This morning I opened the back door so the dogs could go out (they go through the doggie door) and I went to the kennel like I do every morning. I came back after an hour or so and noticed that something was wrong with Ringo.

I checked him everywhere but couldn't find any blood. Each of his legs bent just fine, and didn't seem to hurt him. I checked his face, eyes, teeth, and ears...nothing. So I figured I must be just too much of a worrywart. So I tossled his hair and put my hands around the bottom of his face to lift his face to me to give him a kiss and he pulled away and let out a yelp!

I started checking around his neck and I noticed that his collar, while still on, was broken. I removed his collar and investigated some more and found he had a rope style burn around his neck and some hair missing. In talking with the vet, she said he must have gotten his collar caught on the fence. Thank God he didn't choke to death!

We don't know if he was stuck on the fence for 5 secons, 5 minutes or almost the whole hour I was at the kennel.

There was one one area along the edge of the fence where the snow has been high enough taht the dogs would step out of the yard and walk around the acreage. Now the snow is down low enough that he has to jump to get out, and obviously he didn't make it.

He also has a lot of matted fur where his collar was. He holds his head down lower and looks so sad. My heart breaks for him. I have removed collars from all 3 of my dogs...at least until the snow is totally gone. I would hate to come home sometime and find one of them hanging on the fence.

Here's a picture of part of Ringo's owie:

It's hard to see it in this picture, but that line is where the burn is. The skin is scraped there, but not totally broken. And the area all around that line is swelled up. My poor baby.