Magic caught a squirrel on Thursday. Whose dog ever actually succeeds at catching the squirrel? They all try, but they don’t often get them. I’m still unsure exactly what happened leading up to it as it was one of those things that just occurs so quickly that you can’t quite process it all or retain all of the details.
We were out for our morning walk around the block. The squirrel must have either run down the opposite side of the telephone pole we were passing or out from under a car parked on the street. I can’t say for sure because by the time my brain realized it was there, we were all in a bush on the other side of the sidewalk. This crazy critter literally ran 2 feet in front of us. Why, squirrel, why? Rook ran to the left side of the bush, Magic to the right, and I’m left trying to stay on my feet and drag them back out to the sidewalk. I got Rookie out first and had no idea that Magic had the squirrel until I noticed her either nosing or pawing the ground and saw the squirrel’s tail poking out next to her.
I told her to, “leave it,” and got her to back away. Unfortunately, that’s when I saw the squirrel could not use it’s back legs. The poor thing was just panting, panicked and dragging itself away from us. This is when all of the curses start flowing through my brain as I’m still trying to process that this even happened in the first place and now that I can’t just leave this squirrel to drag itself under another bush to die a horrible and prolonged death.
At some point while I’m watching this squirrel, going over my options for how to get it back to my house and to work with me and telling the dogs repeatedly to, “leave it,” that the neighbor’s garage door opened followed by her walking out her front door. She thought we were waiting for her get in her car and pull out, so I had to explain the situation. She said that if it died, she would take care of it later. That would be all well and good except for the drawn out suffering of the squirrel until it actually died.
Eventually, I cut our walk short, went back home, threw the dogs inside and grabbed a cat carrier from the basement. I took that back to the squirrel, who had since given up on trying to hide and was just laying in the same spot we had left her in. She made a valiant attempt to escape when she realized I was back for her, but you can’t get very far very fast when half of your body doesn’t work. I managed to get her by her scruff and start directly her into the carrier and helped her back end in after the mobile front.
Once at work, my head tech helped get her into a box that we could connect to our anesthesia machine and get her anesthetized with the gas. One of my other techs was waiting to snap an x-ray. I did a brief exam once she was out and before the x-ray to find that she was bleeding from her vulva. X-ray confirmed a broken spine, so I euthanized her, given the extent of her injuries.
I feel terrible for the squirrel that this was her end. What a terrifying and painful way to die. Ok, maybe not the last few minutes, but the hour plus between Magic rolling/crushing her and when she actually drew her last breath. I can’t really be mad at Magic. She’s a dog with very common chase instincts that are generally brought out by small, fast moving animals like squirrels. Yes, we do try and work and getting her not to focus so much on those things and more on us, but we obviously have a long way to go. She never grabbed the squirrel or gave it a death shake. Generally when she meets other animals, she wants to sniff them, lick them and play with them, not eat or kill them. She also often has no sense of where her body is in space or her own strength. I know all of these things about her, but I was not prepared for a squirrel to ever be that close to us intentionally.
I apparently, for now, have to be even more vigilant than I thought I did for anything moving on our walks. Lots more work on disengagement from the environment and impulse control for the dogs and lots more consistency from me about those things. I definitely do not want to make euthanizing small animals that my dog has mortally wounded a regular occurrence. It doesn’t make me happy and is not the way I prefer to start (or end or anything in between during) my days.
Moral to the story: be on alert for suicidal squirrels and misbehaving mutts.
“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.” ~ Isaac Asimov
