Zara

The past few months have been very difficult in our house. After Jethro left us on Oct 5th, 2011 our Red Heeler X Kelpie dog, Zara, went into a complete funk. She was really depressed for several weeks and when she came out of it, she was crazier than ever. She was always a neurotic dog, but she missed Jethro and her behaviour was crazy. It didn't matter how many times I threw the ball for her, or how much time I spent with her - she had lost the plot. She invented a new game to keep herself occupied and it involved stalking the horses!!! Over a couple of weeks, she went from stalking them to make them run away from her - when she would give chase - to actually hunting them. I was aware she was doing this, so kept her inside with me or chained up when I wasn't outside. One w/end DH had been away and I was distracted when he got home. I heard Zara's tell-tale lunatic barking which told me she was stirring the horses up. I yelled at her, it went quiet & I thought nothing more about it ... completely distracted by DH describing the vintage cars he'd seen over the w/end. I went out to feed the horses about 45 mins later. Diego had a very nasty bite mark high up on one hind leg, with a second not so bad one on the other leg. As soon as I saw it I knew that Zara had got him. It was still bleeding freely so I cleaned it up, treated it & went looking for the dog. DH found her lying beside her kennel and she was also bleeding. I examined her gently and saw that her bottom jaw was broken, some teeth were missing and she appeared to have a head injury as well. I have no doubt that she had 'got' the horse with her first bite, but then he 'got' her when she went back for a second bite ... and he has shoes on. She'd taken a hard kick to her head and face. By now it was around 9.30pm on Sunday night. Luckily I had some Ketamine (a strong sedation) which I had been using when treating one of the horses for a serious eye infection. The horse dosage was 3 mls, so I gave Zara 2 mls. If that was too much for her, did it really matter? She was out of it within 30 minutes and was not in any discomfort throughout the night when I checked her several times. We took her to the vet first thing on Monday morning. The date was 5th December ~ only two months after Jethro left us. She was 12 years and 2 months old. She was a crazy, neurotic dog but we miss her.
R.I.P. Zara.