DOG DAY

This morning with the tell tell signs of macadamia nut crumbs around his mouth.

Sunday I noticed one of our neighbors dogs was limping so I went to investigate. She had a HUGE gash on her leg.... I cleaned it out and bandaged it... Poor thing could barely walk on her back leg. I e-mailed the owners, who are on vacation, pictures and arrangements were made to get her to the vet with another family yesterday and she is doing fine.

So now that the dog became friendly with me, she decided to hang in our yard... and then she discovered the coop and Kekoa. I went out Monday morning at 7:00 AM and she, the dog, was trying to get in. Kekoa was FREAKED and had tried to escape... only to keep hitting the chicken wire and walls. When I went in to check on him his beak and face was covered in blood. He was hiding in the corner behind his palm frond we had in there specifically for that purpose and I was able to just pick him right up. He cut his beak up really bad on the chicken wire. In fact we think it has a slight crack. Once inside we cleaned it with peroxide and tried to get the bleeding to stop with cornstarch. It bled for 3 hours until we could get him to the vet when they finally opened. Of course 5 minutes before we got there it stopped bleeding.

But at least we were having him looked at. He was in shock and lost a fair amount of blood... He was very weak but I was able to get him to drink water and eat macadamia nut pieces.... his favorite. John and I were calm but freaking out inside and preparing for the worst. We thought for sure a broken beak on a bird meant that he would not survive.

The vet put something similar to liquid band-aid on it to seal the crack and close up the wound. It was really all they could do. So we kept him in the house last night and he was exhausted.
He slept straight through from 6:00 PM Monday night until Tuesday morning.

Today he seems almost back to normal... if not a little beat-up looking. It looks worse than it really is because the liquid band-aid is on thick and had a bit of gauze stuck to it. That should all wear off in a few days.

He appears to be a bit afraid of the coop... so we had to reintroduce him to it slowly today. In fact, we have had to move it into the tractor shed for the time being, just in case the dog decides to come back over. Looks like he needs another week or so to regroup before we release him. We hate the thought of keeping him cooped up any longer, so we will see how soon we can get him in nature... where he will hopefully run/fly like there is no tomorrow should another critter come after him.