DOG ATTACK – YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE
–By Dr. Melissa Hamilton
Reprinted from TLC News, Fall 2003

Everyone has thought of the possibility of their animals being the victim of a dog attack at some point in time, but the thought passes and you feel this could not happen to me. Please think again because this could happen to your herd.

There are very few fence designs on our farms that are dog proof, and many of us have fences that need repair. From barbed wire to a no climb fence, no matter how carefully you have selected your fencing, there is still the persistence of some dogs, especially dogs (domestic or feral) in a pack.

Approximately one year ago I was called by a distressed client. Their herd of seven llamas, mostly young animals, had been attacked by a pack of dogs from their neighborhood. The owners Border Collie had acted agitated multiple times that a.m. and the donkey in the pasture had brayed a few times, but they had no realization of what was occurring at the back of their pasture early that morning. At feeding time she found 3-4 mid-sized dogs around their pond with the entire herd of seven llamas in the pond. After chasing the dogs away, the owners discovered one llama had drowned in the three foot deep pond and that all but one llama had bite wounds from the dogs. I was called to the farm and upon inspection of all the llamas, found that the smallest llama was unharmed. Three midsized llamas had superficial wounds down the back of the neck and across their top line and the adult female had deep puncture wounds on the tail, rectum and along her top line. Their adult male also had traumatic injuries along with his top line injuries, he had two large holes ripped into his muscle around his rectum, one of which had a partially torn testicle exposed. He also had large punctures on his underside on either side of his urethra. In addition to his dramatic wounds, this was a cold morning and he was in shock and hypothermic from being in the water. The most unfortunate loss was the seventh animal which had become hypothermic and went down and drowned in the pond.

An interesting fact in this case was that there were 2 horses, 2 ponies, and 3 miniature donkeys in the same pasture – all of which were not injured in any way.

With propane heaters and blankets we warmed up all of the llamas. The most seriously injured young male had to be sedated to castrate him and repair as many of the wounds as possible. All of the llama’s wounds were derided, cleaned and treated with antibiotics. It took approximately 5 hours for us to treat the five injured llamas.

For three long months and many vet bills later, all five llamas recovered with treatment of daily water therapy, cleaning wounds, injectible and oral antibiotics, and diligent treatment from their owners and a neighbors help.

The dogs from this case were seen back in the area over the next couple of days, but were never identified. Animal Control/Animal Shelter instructed the owner that there was nothing they could do except provide them with live traps to catch the dogs.

The fences in this case were barbed wire which made easy entry for the dogs. However, I have recently had my own trouble with a dog attack. A few weeks ago, two of my neighbors Alaskan Malamutes crawled under our woven wire fence into Arnie and Winky’s pasture and their pack instinct kicked in. Luckily I had gone out to my truck at 11:30 p.m. and heard Winky screaming. He has puncture wounds on the side of his abdomen, on his scrotum and his right rump had a quarter sized hole into the muscle. Winky is recovering from his injuries, but our fear of dogs has increased 10 fold! Our fence was as few inches off the ground as possible and covered as many gates with no climb fence as possible. And our neighbor still insists her dogs are “good dogs”.

Please consider how safe your pastures and fences are and understand that this can be a problem any of us can encounter at any time. Attempts to dog proof your fence may be beneficial to deter dogs or a dog proof paddock for night time (when most dog attacks occur) housing may improve the safety of your animals.