Diary: 7.5. Bailey's Brush With Death
This one is a difficult post to write. Let us begin by saying, she is OK now. To be fair, neither of us can remember much of what happened that day, and we’re happy we don’t, but we’ll tell you what we can remember.
Just a normal day, out working on the van, everyone doing a thousand jobs. Matt’s mum came out of the house and said she couldn’t find Bailey. We thought oh here we go again, how did she get out this time, lets all go and find her. We looked over the field, and she wasn’t there, so we looked down the road. There she was, the little scamp, weaving in and out of people’s front gardens, and she was headed towards a building site in the cul-du-sac.
We could just envision her running in there, startling a bricky with a trough of bricks on his shoulders and causing an injury to her or someone else. A few days earlier, she had pulled the same escape trick (and we STILL don’t know how she was getting out, despite blocking off every avenue we could see in the fence), and had given me the run around through all the back streets, up to the sea wall and back before I could corner her in someone’s back garden.
As I knew the route Bailey was likely to take, Matt’s Mum and I jumped in the car, ready to head her off when she went to run to the sea wall. Yep, I was using the tactics of old Western films. In the meantime, Matt, Jamie and James all ran up the road to the building site Bailey had gotten onto. They attempted to block her in, but she has the speed of a whippet and the size of a small cat, so you can just about imagine how difficult she is to catch when she sprints.
She ran into another front garden. This one was on the corner of the road junction. I drove up to the end of the road, ready to block any traffic if Bailey looked like she was going to cross it.
Remember how we said she has the speed of a Whippet?
She darted through Matt’s legs at the garden gate, and raced straight to the road junction. She was so quick, I couldn’t get the car out and into the road fast enough. As Matt ran after her and turned the corner yelling at her to come back, all that could be heard was a loud thump. And then a blood curdling squeal.
I didn’t see Bailey get hit, but all I can remember is jumping straight out of the car (thank goodness Julie was in it to put on the handbrake) and screaming at the top of my lungs as I ran towards a bloodied Bailey at the side of the road.
Matt saw her get hit. All he can remember is watching the car coming towards her as she turned her head to look at why he was yelling at her. It was all in slow motion. Time sped back up as soon as he heard me scream, and watched me sprint over to scoop Bailey up from the side of the road. By the time he had looked up, the car that hit her had gone. No thought to what had happened, no brake lights. A car coming from the opposite direction had seen it all happen and told Matt that she was hit in the head by the front wheel of the car.
If she hadn’t turned to see why Matt was yelling her name, it would’ve been her back under the wheel, no doubt about it.
Time then sped up to double speed. Still cradled in my arms and bleeding profusely from her face, Bailey was as stunned as the rest of us, but she was still conscious. We raced back down to the house to grab her paperwork. She was still registered to a vet in Norwich, and we didn’t even know if a different vet would carry out treatment. Matt drove while I tended to a steadily sleepier Bailey in the front seat.
We cannot praise Medivets on Canvey Island enough. Both the initial consult and her follow up appointment 5 days later were honestly superb.
Once seen by reception and very hastily registered, it was only a 5 minute wait until a vet saw us. He was one of the partners of the surgery, and he was thorough, calm and most importantly he explained everything very clearly.
Bailey had been holding her paw up the entire journey to the vets, and we feared it was broken, so when the vet asked us to pop her down on the floor so he could see her walking and behaviour, we held our breath.
She paused, she swayed, she walked. Thank the powers that be. She went around, sniffed the floor, and did her best to avoid the vet, who quite funnily was on all fours too, following her around the room!
The sigh of relief unfortunately triggered our shock. The adrenaline got us there, but as soon as she was walking it completely stopped coursing through our veins. Welcome to faintness, dizziness and nausea. While the vet took Bailey off to be stapled and glued back together he left us to mull over whether she is the kind of dog who could be left there overnight on a drip to help her not go into severe shock, or if she would be better off coming home with us.
Well, we didn’t really think about it, we just sat and cried and felt drained. We didn’t really need to think about it though. Bailey is a worrier and a warrior. We knew she’d be fine at home with us, and would be in a worse state left in a room of other sick and sad animals with a drip in the back of her paw. The vet had also informed us that they were a 24 hour veterinary surgery, and there was a number we could call anytime day or night if we felt she was worse.
He brought her back in, all stapled and glued together, most of the blood cleaned off of her and ready to go home. The vet could see that she was starting to go into a bit of shock herself (after noticing we were in shock too!), and offered Matt a cup of sweet tea while he went to get Bailey some pain relief.
After a couple of injections, a prescription of pain killers and antibiotics, and a bill for £113, we were ready to take our little lucky rubber band puppy back home.
I showered to wash off the blood reminding me of how close Bailey had come to death, Bailey curled up in her bed, hazy from the pain relief and Matt set about reporting the road traffic collision to the local police department.
We were all safe, we were all home. We didn’t do anymore work to the van that day.
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