At the beginning of May, Boston went on a bit of an adventure and learnt the hard way about the dangers of crossing a road without his owner. He was run over by a car and sustained serious injuries to both back legs and his lower abdomen. Boston has earned his status as pet of the month as he exemplifies just how well the body can heal. He was the perfect patient – always coming in with a waggy tail and tolerating his treatments with the utmost bravery. His wounds looked substantial at the beginning, but he was actually very fortunate – there were no broken bones or torn tendons. With time, patience, lots of TLC from his owners and many bright coloured bandages, Boston has made an excellent recovery.
WARNING: Some of the following photos will be confronting, but if you can persevere you will see just how well Boston has done. We can happily say he is out of bandages now and is gently easing back into ball play and exercise with his doggy mum.
These next two photos were taken about 5 days post injury. You can see he has lost skin and subcutaneous tissue from both hind feet. These wounds are nice and clean with no evidence of infection. His healing is off to a good start. His bandages were being changed daily initially, then on alternate days. This was important as these wounds were busy producing quite a lot of discharge. The first phase of wound healing is called the inflammatory phase.
As healing progresses, you can see the formation of granulation tissue – this is the pink fleshy material that is filling in the wounds. This second phase of wound healing is called the proliferative phase.
Once wounds are covered by a healthy bed of granulation tissue, new skin cells can start to grow over this and close the gap. This is called epithelialisation.
By this stage, Boston was feeling much better. He was walking well without any lameness and was off medication. The final phase of wound healing is called the maturation phase. Bandages were kept on until all the skin had regrown and closed all of the wounds.
From start to finish, Boston spent 6 weeks resting and recovering in bandages. Although we have loved his company, we hope to only see him for routine vet visits in the future!