The attack

We rented a house in the Dells with Dave's family to spend some quality time with Dave's dad before his Alzheimer's worsens.  The house didn't allow dogs, so we had to board Bailey.  We'd originally had reservations for a kennel around here, but then we remembered that the breeder from whom we got Bailey boards dogs.  Since she was so close to the Dells, we thought that would be perfect.  Bailey wouldn't have to be alone most of the day, she could play with the other dogs and she could see "her first human" again.

On our way to drop Bailey off.
I sent this picture to my friend Meghan, saying, "The trunk was so full, she got to come to the main part of the van. She's having so much fun looking out the window."
It turned out it would be our last picture of her with two eyes.

Bailey seemed a little strange when we dropped her off, but we chalked it up to her being excited.  We settled into our vacation confident that she was having fun.

After lunch on our third day in the Dells we were by the pool.  The kids were all going down the slide with their cousins and a big blow up whale.  I took my phone from the stroller so I could take pictures, and I noticed I'd missed a call from the breeder a few minutes earlier.  

I called her back, and she asked where we were.  I told her, and she said, "Your baby got bit. I'm at the vet.  They fixed her up, and I can take her home.  She lost all her baby teeth, but the vet things her adult teeth will grow back."

She then went on to tell me she didn't know which dog did it, but she thinks it was Chris.  She told me she'd let the dogs out in the morning and she thought she didn't think "so and so" was in heat yet, but she later saw Chris "doing" that dog.  So she thinks Bailey might have been trying to play with her and then Chris got her.  She then was telling me more about who was supposed to breed with who.  My mind was reeling.  I interrupted and said, my voice quivering, "How bad is she?"

"Oh, she's bad."

I remembered how one of the first things she'd said is that she could take her home, so I asked, "Are you leaving now?  Dave and I will meet you at your house."  She told me to meet her at the vet instead, and she gave us directions.

I ran in and told Dave.  We arranged for his mom and sister to watch the kids, slipped on some clothes, and drove to the vet.  We didn't say much as we drove.  I couldn't believe the breeder had let my dog get hurt.  We'd trusted her to watch our four-month-old puppy, and she ended up at the vet getting "fixed up."  I tried to anticipate what the bite was like.  I wondered if there were marks outside or if it was all inside her mouth.  I wondered if she was in pain.  I wondered if we'd have to leave vacation.  

When arrived at the vet, which turned out to be an emergency veterinary hospital, I told the receptionist, "Our dog was bitten.  The person watching her brought her in."

With a solemn expression that made me more nervous, the receptionist showed us to a room.  When I walked in, I saw the breeder in the corner and Bailey lying on the floor.  I couldn't look at the breeder, but I bent down and said, "Hi, puppy!"  Bailey turned her head to lick me, and I saw her face.  The side of her face was shaven, and there were two jagged lines pulled together with stitches where her eye had once been.  I began to sob, "Oh my God.  Her eye!  Her eye!"  I gently pulled her head into my hands to hug her and choked out, "I'm so sorry, Bailey.  I'm so sorry."  Without looking up, I said to the breeder, "You didn't tell me about her eye."

She mumbled, "I didn't get to that."

I realized I couldn't breathe.  I managed to stand back up and walk into the hall.  I tried to catch my breath, but I just kept seeing Bailey's shaven, stitched up face in my mind, and I couldn't stop sobbing.  The receptionist came down the hall and put her arms around me.  I said, "I didn't know about her eye."

She said, "She should have told you."

I took a ragged breath and managed to ask the question of which I was afraid to know the answer, "Will she ever be... normal."

"Yes, yes she will."

I apologized for making a scene and went back into the room.  Dave was on the floor with Bailey.  Tears slipped down his cheeks.  Bailey kept kissing him to tell him not to worry.

The vet who had performed the surgery came in.  She kept saying, "I am so sorry about this."  She explained the surgery, but the details were all too gory for me to digest.  Evidently Bailey's sinus cavity had been crushed which popped the eye.   She had to reconstruct the sinus cavity and the eye couldn't be saved.  She showed Dave some pictures of something from the surgery on her phone, which I chose not to look at.  I didn't need more images in my head.

While talking with the vet, we learned that the bite had occurred at 7:30 that morning, and that the breeder had taken Bailey to the vet hospital before it even opened.  I thought how it was strange we didn't get a call until after noon.  Maybe she was waiting to make sure she could tell us it was okay.  I still couldn't look at the breeder.  I could tell she felt bad, so I was trying to forgive her, but I couldn't even look her direction.  We discussed Bailey's long term prognosis, which looked good, and we learned she needed to spend the night.  I guess the breeder, who's a vet tech, had offered to give her care at her house, which is why she'd said she could take her home, but I wasn't even considering that.

When the vet left the room, the breeder said, "I'll write you a check for the money you paid for her back."

"No," I said immediately.  It seemed to me she was, like... refunding our money now that the product was defective.  Our dog had one eye now, so we would get a refund, like we didn't want her or she wasn't good enough.  I continued, "She's still our dog.  We still love her."  Then I asked, "Will you be paying for the vet bills?"  When she said she would be, I said, "Then that's fine."

After a while, Dave left the room.  He'd been able to hold himself together a lot longer than I'd been, but it eventually all got to be too much for him, too.  One of the vet techs came in to check on us, and I asked her about the care Bailey would receive over night.  "She loves to be around people," I explained.  They assured me she wouldn't be alone.  They even took me to see the room where Bailey would stay.  It was a big room with a fancy little bed in one corner, meant to look like a throne.  They told us we could visit again before 5:00 and they returned me to the room with Bailey and the breeder.

When they took Bailey back to her room, I was left alone with the breeder.  She said, "I just feel terrible." I told her not to feel so badly.  Before I left, I gave her a hug.  I told her accidents happen, that I wasn't mad at her.

When Dave and I left the hospital, we drove down the road and pulled into a parking lot.  Neither of us said anything for a while.  I was just shocked.  Our dog only had one eye.  Two days before, we'd left a spunky, perfect four month old puppy.  Now we had a mutilated one-eyed dog. Dave finally said, "We should have taken the money."

"Are you kidding?" I asked.  "What would that help?  What would we do?  Buy an eye?  Maybe she made a small mistake letting them out, but this just got out of control.  She certainly didn't mean to let it happen, and how much should she pay for that."

He said he wasn't kidding.

We went back to the house and got the kids situated.  We took the girls outside and told them what happened.  We explained that a dog had thought Bailey was doing something wrong to him, but that she wasn't, and that he got mad and bit her.  We told them that Bailey's eye got hurt and that she was only going to have one eye now, but that she was still the same dog.  We told them that Bailey would get used to having only one eye and it wouldn't bother her.  We told them that she looked really bad now, just like their knee looks bad when they skin it.  But, after the owies healed up and her hair grew back, it would all just look like her cheek, and she'd still be beautiful.  Anna said she was mad at the dog that did it.  We said that was okay.

After a couple hours, we went back to check on her.  She was lying on the throne, but when she saw us, she staggered off to give us our kisses.  We told her to relax and we pet her and cried some more.  I noticed they'd hung pictures low down on the wall, at dog level, of squirrels and other dogs.  Dave suggested we take a picture of Bailey to show the girls, and I did.

The breeder called us on our way to dinner that evening.  I didn't feel like talking to her, but I was polite.  She asked how Bailey was doing, and I said that she seemed happy to see us when we visited, that we planned to take her home in the morning. Then she mentioned something about how Bailey could have maybe kept her eye but it would have taken five or six surgeries, so she said she opted to have it removed.  This bothered me a lot.  I agreed that I wouldn't have subjected Bailey to five or six surgeries, but shouldn't that have been our decision, Dave's and mine?  Not knowing what to say, I told her I agreed with that decision.  Dave asked what she'd said, and I told him.  He was furious.  He said he would have wanted to save her eye.  I tried to calm him, saying that we wouldn't have wanted to keep putting Bailey under anesthesia and keep having her go through recovery.  But we both agreed that it should have been our decision.  Why weren't we called in the first five hours after the accident?

Dave was so upset about everything all evening.  When we went to bed, he said, "I don't know if we can keep her.  How can we care for a handicapped dog.  Our house isn't equipped."  I told him that made no sense, that they'd assured us she'd be normal.  I told him that she'd be our special dog.  I told him 25 years from now, we wouldn't talk about "poor Bailey who'd lost an eye," we'd say, "Bailey was such a great dog, she did this and she did that, and all with one eye.  That never slowed her down."  I promised him that this would all seem better in the morning.  I made him take a Benadryl to help him sleep.  Then I lay there myself, my mind racing, trying to digest that we'd dropped off our four month old puppy just two days before, a frisky, loving, rambunctious puppy, and now she had somehow become mutilated, forever handicapped.  I kept seeing her face in my mind, I kept wondering how much she'd suffered, wondering if she wondered where we were.  I lay there for hours until I took a Benadryl myself.  I slept a few hours until Dave woke me up and asked for another Benadryl.  Then I lay awake until morning.

I had told Dave it would all look better in the morning, but it didn't.  If anything, it looked worse.  Tired, worried, depressed we had to make decisions about who was going to leave vacation.  I thought maybe I'd just take Bailey home, but I couldn't leave Dave with all the kids and no mode of transportation.  I also wasn't sure that I, the one who gets light headed looking at a skinned knee, would even be able to give Bailey the care that she needed for the next two days.  Dave decided we should all go home.  We broke the news to Kate and Anna and they weeped, like we'd just ruined their lives.  Dave asked what I thought we should do now, now that they were crying.  Exhausted I asked, "Well?  How did you think they'd react?"  Then it dawned on me that maybe Dave's mom and sister could keep the older girls and Dave and I could go home with the twins.  I whispered this idea to Dave and he came back to tell me that it would work.  He'd bring the twins and me home and then come back to the Dells.  I stared at him.  Was that the idea I'd just proposed?  That was, like, the worst of each of the plans.  I was alone with Bailey and her stitches, but I also had two toddlers.  I took a deep breath and trudged on.

We fed the twins some random food around the house, packed up the car, and headed off to get Bailey.  When we got there, we asked if we could talk to the vet.  We asked if her eye could have been saved, and what that would have entailed.  She told us that it couldn't have been saved.  She explained that her eye was dangling when she arrived, that the optic nerve had been severed and that the eye had been popped and deflated.  There was another image I wouldn't be able to get out of my head.

One of the things that bothered Dave the most was that he'd never be able to move past the accident.  He was afraid that everytime he was out for a walk, enjoying time with his dog, someone would ask, "What happened to her eye?"  His idea for a solution was to get a prosthetic eye for Bailey.  He asked the vet about this.  She said, "The problem with prosthetic eyes for dogs is that they eat them."  I laughed a little, being that I could absolutely picture this.  Then Dave continued, "So, how would we go about getting her one?"  I looked at him like he'd lost his mind.  I'd later tease him, pretending to be him asking the question, Yeah, okay, so after she eats it, do we just remove it from the poop, wash it in some dish soap, and pop it right back in?  Would we be able to get a spare to use while it traveled through her GI track?  Before we left, the vet said, "I just wanted to say [to the breeder], 'How could you let this happen?  You know better!' but that isn't my place."

Driving home, I held Bailey in my lap, listening to her labored breathing.   I again tried to help Dave feel better, telling him that soon this wouldn't seem so bad.  He told me he felt so awful, he was just filled with anger that the breeder let this happen.  I tried to help him forgive her.  I told him she didn't think the dog was in heat yet.  She should have still been more careful, but it was just a mistake.  I told him I make mistakes all the time, and I've just gotten lucky nothing bad happened.  He wasn't buying it.  I continued, "Have you ever handed a toy back to Luke and Ally when driving?  That's probably not the wisest decision.  But, if someone jumped out in front of you when you did that, and you hit them, would it be your fault?  You'd feel terrible, but it wouldn't really be your fault.  You shouldn't be punished for it.  The breeder made a small mistake, and the consequences just got out of control.  It was just bad luck."  I tried to encourage him, "We can't hold anger.  You'll feel better if you forgive her."

That first day home wasn't too bad.  Bailey seemed to perk up when we got back home, like she was so relieved to be back home that she forgot how much pain she was in.  I felt like this wasn't all that bad; I could handle it.

It was the next days home that were the hardest.  The first night, Bailey had to pee every half hour or so all night long.  I'd take her out, she'd pee, then she'd come home, stagger onto some carpeting and leave a huge puddle.  She'd look at me like, "I'm sorry.  I don't know what is going on."  I realized it was probably all the fluids she'd been given in surgery the day before.

She was weak and, at times, even despondent.  I'd have to carry her outside sometimes.  I had now gone two nights without sleep, which didn't help my mood.  I worried constantly.  When I looked at her, I felt sick, thinking of her pain.  I got woozy every time I had to clean blood or fluid off her stitches.  I tried to nap when the twins did, but I couldn't sleep thinking about what happened.  I couldn't eat, because I couldn't enjoy anything when Bailey was in so much pain and Dave was so upset.  I became physically and emotionally drained, exhausted, depressed.  But I was trying to remain positive, so I wasn't letting these feelings show.  When Dave would call, I'd tell him something good that happened.

When Dave and the girls came back from the Dells, the girls just kept looking at Bailey with expressions of horror.  At one point, I came into the kitchen where Anna and Ally were standing by Bailey chanting, "Yucky Bailey.  Yucky Bailey."  I wanted to burst into tears, but I told them, "Bailey is beautiful.  She just has a bad sore that needs to heal up."

Before bed that night, the girls bombarded me with hard questions.  How much did it hurt her when the dog bit her?  How long did it hurt her before she got fixed?  Will she think other dogs will bite her?  I answered as many as I could, but these questions, and the exhaustion, were too much.  I went into Anna's room to put sheets on her bed, then just began sobbing.  Dave came in and found me, crumpled onto Anna's bed in a heap.  I told him, "I've been trying to be so strong, but this is all so much.  This is all so hard."

Over the weekend, we'd talked to our vets back home, I'd talked to my friend who's a vet tech, and I'd talked to my friend who's a farmer.  During these conversations, each of them mentioned, in one way or another, that this shouldn't have happened, that the breeder really messed up.  My friend who has worked as a vet tech for 17 years, even working in a sketchy clinic where she saw dogs come in after dog fights, said she'd never seen a dog-induced injury as bad as Bailey's.  She said she believes it was more than one bite, that the dog attacked Bailey for a while.  Again, this was an image I couldn't take in.  I couldn't handle the thought of a 105 pound dog hurting my twenty-some pound puppy for a prolonged period of time while the breeder was oblivious inside.   All these things.  I didn't want to think of them.  I didn't want to be angry, because the short time I was angry, before I forgave the breeder, it was all even harder.  I kept reminding myself that we all make mistakes.

Monday Bailey's eye started oozing.  Her fur was saturated around her head and there was a puddle in her cone.  I put the kids in the car, and we rushed her to the vet.  She was fine.  The vet explained how the eye socket is an empty space and it has to fill with something... I tuned the rest out.  In case I was going to start sleeping again, I didn't want to fill my mind with any new mental images to prevent that.

Driving home from the vet, I remembered something and it took my breath away.  I was stopped at a red light and shivers went down my spine and my eyes filled with tears.  When we'd dropped Bailey off at the breeder's house, she'd asked if the kids wanted to come play with the dogs.  We were running late, so we declined, planning to play when we picked Bailey up instead.  What if... Oh, my God.  What if it had been one of my kids!?  Thank you, God, that it wasn't one of my kids.  Bailey will be okay.  She will suffer for a couple weeks, but she will heal, and she will live a basically normal life.  If people ask about her eye, she will just kiss them and thank them for the attention.  My kid's life would never have been normal.

After I put the twins down for their nap, I called the vet who did the surgery because she's worked with the breeder over the years.  I explained that I was trying to decide if I should report the dog bite.  I said I was grieving my dog's suffering, and the last thing I wanted to do was cause anyone else any grief, but I couldn't live with myself if another dog (or, Heaven forbid, child) was mutilated because I didn't say anything.  I wanted to know if there was any sort of history of this, or if it really was the one and only time.  The vet told me she couldn't give me any details, because she's sworn to patient confidentiality.  She said, "Even if this has happened many times before I couldn't tell you about it".  Then she told me, with emphasis on every word, that I had every right to worry.  She asked me if the breeder had told me she was a vet.  The breeder had told us that originally, but I later came to realize she was a vet tech.  I said, "Yes."  She said, "Call her.  Ask her again if she's a vet.  Then ask her where she went to school.  Then ask her if this type of thing has ever happened before...and trust your heart.  You'll know what you have to do."  

I understood this vet was telling me not to believe this was an isolated incident.  She was definitely implying something or things have happened before.  She also mentioned there was someone she'd like me to talk to.  She said she was going to call them and give them my number.  She ended the conversation by saying, "Working with [the breeder]... it's an adventure."

This new information, that this wasn't just a one-time mistake, that she not only messed up, but she had a habit of messing up...  it made me mad.  I hadn't been mad.  I'd been sad.  I'd been disappointed.  I'd been grieving my dog's suffering, the loss of her eye and our plan of her having a perfect life, but I hadn't been mad.  Now I was mad.  I was mad about Bailey's suffering, but I was also mad that our vacation was ruined, that we didn't have the time as a family we were supposed to have.  I was mad I was spending this week of perfect summer weather caring for a one-eyed dog instead of playing outside with my kids and my puppy.  I was mad we had to miss swim lessons and gymnastics.  I was mad I had to shampoo pee out of the carpets.  I was mad Dave and I hadn't slept in three days and that my kids now wondered which dogs were going to bite.  I decided to ask for the money she'd offer us.  When I did, she said she didn't have it, but she'd get it to me.  Why was I surprised?

But, what about the other dog?  I wasn't sure what to do.  I had to find out what the breeder's plans were for the dog.  I called and asked.  She said she planned to breed him two more times and then neuter him and find him a home.  

I spent the entire week thinking about that.  I asked advice from multiple vets and people who work with animals.  Although everyone agreed that the breeder messed up, there were differing views on the dog.  Some people believed wholeheartedly that the dog must be euthanized; others believed it was all situational, that it was an instinct because the dog was by a dog in heat.  I wondered if neutering would really protect people in the future.   If he mutilated my dog for walking in the wrong direction, what might he do to a toddler that steals his toy?  And what about the time before he actually was neutered?  Could I trust this breeder to really be careful?

After a week of thinking it over, I concluded that I had to report it.  I didn't want the dog to be euthanized, and I didn't want the breeder to lose out on income if she couldn't breed him, and I didn't want the breeder to get fined or in trouble, but I had to do something.  I hadn't been able to find peace all week because I hadn't done what I had to do.  Even if the dog ended up euthanized, and even if other bad things happened, I couldn't have the risk of someone else getting hurt on me.  If I let that happen, I couldn't live with myself.  That was it, people before dogs.  I had to report it.

I finally called the guy in Baraboo who fields the complaints, and I asked what happens next.  He said my complaint would go on record.  Because it was "dog on dog" (which I disagreed with considering she was a four month old puppy) it gets filed.  If there are two more attacks, then the dog will get deemed vicious and certain precautions will be put in place.  I argued that this wasn't just a dog bite, it was an attack, a mutilation; our puppy nearly died.  He said that if the attacks are as severe as the one that happened to Bailey, it sometimes only take two to have the dog deemed vicious, instead of three.  

I was stunned.  I hung up the phone and felt hollow, sick.  It's not like I wanted the dog to have to die, but nothing will be done.  I had believed that it was up to me, that once I reported it, the authorities would jump into action and everyone would be protected.  I didn't want bad things to happen to the dog or the breeder, but, nothing will happen... nothing.  An attack like this... which has left the puppy lying at my feet bumping into everything on her right side when she walks, having to turn her head all the way around to see us when we talk to her, and not being able to tell how far to run to catch the ball when playing her favorite game... this could happen again, and there is nothing I can do.  Next time it could be a child, and it's out of my power to do anything to stop it.  That is the worst of this all.