From Bad to Worse
Dogzilla running on the beach, Oregon Coast
After the dogs had finished splashing in the water, I loaded them back into the trailer. Once they were inside, I secured their harnesses to the inside roll bar so that they could move inside the trailer, but not get out of it, so that no one could get hurt should they try to jump out. It’s not a feature that came with the trailer, but something I put in myself to try and make things safer. Having secured the dogs, we were on our way, coasting downhill and enjoying the warm afternoon air. Secured probably isn’t the best word here as Dogzilla’s harness was secured to the trailer, but because I hadn’t tightened it when I noticed it had shifted on him while he played in the water, he was less “secured” and more “delicately restrained”.
We made it about a mile down the trail and were going pretty fast for us, about 10 mph, when I suddenly felt myself accelerate unexpectedly on my pedal stroke and the trailer simultaneously felt 20 lbs lighter. A fraction of a second later, I felt a hard thud from the trailer and heard an ear piercing shriek, the thought of which still makes me cringe, and turned to see that Zilla had slipped out of his harness and either jumped or fallen out of the front of the trailer and had been hit by it, his body sucked underneath. He was on the side that Captain was on, and based on how he was laying, the tire had run over his front leg and paw and come to rest on his chest, the ≈100 lbs of the trailer, Captain, and their gear pressing down on him, crushing his little chest. He looked crumpled and his body was thrashing around, trying to get out from under it.
I did my best to get the weight of the trailer off of him as quickly as possible before it could cause any more damage, but because of the way the trailer connects to the bike, I had to do this by lifting the bike and hoping he still had the ability to move out from under it as he would be out of my reach while I lifted the bike. Incredibly, he was able to twist onto his side, just far enough of a move that he was out from under the trailer, so I was able to let go of the bike and rush over to him.
He was dazed at first, had a cut on his chin, and a cut on his chest but to my amazement, had no difficulty breathing, and after a few moments, he got up and seemed totally fine. There was also a small bump above Zilla’s eye as well which I had noticed a few days prior, it wasn’t from the accident, but it did look a little bigger. Overall, it looked like he had once again, in true Zilla fashion, survived a super traumatic event, relatively unscathed! I didn't take it anywhere near as well as he did though and began to sob.
Dogzilla modeling his bloody chin, moments after being crushed by a 100 lbs trailer.
Now when I say he had once again, survived a super traumatic event, relatively unscathed, I’m referring to an incident from 2 years earlier, about 6 months before Captain was diagnosed with her nasal carcinoma. I was coming home from work and when I opened the front door of the house, I could immediately smell the sickly sweet metallic smell of blood. What I saw was not any better, Zilla was laying on the ground in an awkward position and there were 5 visible puddles of vomited blood, all the size of dinner plates, in his vicinity.
My brain had no way to process what was happening at that moment so my first thought was to go and grab a mop. Having previously been in law enforcement and a certified EMT, I had been to numerous accident scenes (cars, ATV’s and boats), suicide scenes, and had seen a lot of dead bodies. My first fatality was a 2 year old child. So having worked all of those incidents without issue, I would have thought I’d have been able to react much quicker, but unfortunately, because Dogzilla was part of my family, all of my training and experience went out the window and my mind just couldn’t understand the severity of the situation.
Thankfully, this shock only lasted a few seconds and as I picked up the mop, I realized that this was a life or death emergency. Unfortunately, I was living at Grand Canyon National Park at the time and the closest emergency vet was 80 miles away. Fearing the worst, I lifted Dogzilla off the floor and started towards Flagstaff.
Zilla’s condition quickly deteriorated in the car; he couldn't stand up, he couldn't sit up, he was panting with the AC on full blast, and ultimately his eyes glazed over and his breathing became erratic. He had gone into shock from the loss of blood and fluids. He was near death and there was nothing I could do except drive faster. As we raced to the hospital, I tried to keep a hand on him so that he could feel he wasn’t alone, I talked to him hoping my voice would provide some comfort, and I made him a promise: “if you survive, I will take you on an epic adventure, somewhere cool, that you have never been”.
(click photos to enlarge and see descriptions)
We covered the 80 miles to the hospital in 45 minutes. I ran inside with his completely limp body and set him on the counter; he had lost all muscle tension and slumped to the surface like a wet towel. The receptionist called for a nurse and she immediately admitted him. I had done everything I could to save him, Dogzilla’s fate was now out of my hands.
The vet started pumping him with an IV and X-rays indicated that he had an obstruction of some kind in his digestive system and they would need to operate. Unfortunately, blood tests showed that his kidneys had been damaged by the severe dehydration from all the vomiting and blood loss meaning he was too high of a risk for anesthesia. We would have to wait and see if his blood values improved enough for surgery or if he crashed again and we had to risk the surgery to prevent imminent death. While we waited, Zilla threw up more blood and had bloody diarrhea. The situation was dire.
The vet told me to go home and take care of Captain as there was nothing else I could do for Zilla at the time while he was being treated and constantly monitored, so I asked for a moment with him, gave him several hugs and kisses, bared my soul to him, and told him how much he meant to me, and said a real, final goodbye as this was very well the last time I would ever get to see him alive. The drive home was as bad as expected and was capped off with a rainbow, not what you want to see when you have a pet on the verge of death (Rainbow Bridge).
When I got back to the house, I was once again greeted by the stench of blood; Captain looked scared and confused. I gave her plenty of hugs and kisses and then set off on the horrible task of cleaning up all the blood. Photographing it is a pretty morbid thing to do, but the extreme sense of helplessness that overwhelmed me at the time reminded me just how incredible my bond with Dogzilla was and how much he meant to me. I don't ever want to forget those feelings or that significance, so the photos served as a reminder of how sincere my love for him was.
I spoke with the vet again that night and they said Zilla had shown slight improvement so they would hold off on surgery for the night, but they called his condition “guarded” and said he had about a 40% chance of survival. Still terrible odds, but much better than when he was first brought in. Besides, Zilla was my little cockroach, nothing could stop him. For example, he had previously torn both of his ACL’s (well, the dog equivalent) and had recovered without surgery, so much so that he later hiked over 30 miles through the mountains with me in under 24 hours. An incredible feat even without the prior injury.
Over the course of the next 2 days, Dogzilla steadily improved with no real medical intervention other than IV’s. The vet had no real way to explain it and we never figured out what had caused it, but the best guess was that something had caused the cilia, the hair-like structures in his small intestine that help move food forward, to stop working which caused the food he was digesting to just sit in place and slowly rot. As the food rotted, it sent poisons into his blood stream which temporarily damaged his kidneys and caused him to begin vomiting up blood and going into shock. He was released on the third day with no restrictions. My little cockroach had pulled through once again!
True to my word, as soon as Zilla was medically cleared to travel, I fulfilled my promise to Zilla and took him on “an epic adventure, somewhere cool that you have never been before”; a 3 week, 10,000 mile road trip to the Arctic Ocean during which he was kicked in the face by a cow, barked at several black bears, and dipped his paw in the Arctic Ocean. Pretty good for a dog who had been on his deathbed less than a month earlier.
