Someone please resuscitate me

[MrSnappy]

Sport just fell down a flight of stairs. I thought I was going to die, right after I thought he was going to die! We were coming up the back stairs from the parking lot and Mr. Sporticus misstepped on the next to top stair, his foot disappeared, and then so did he! He went right through the bottom of the railing and landed on the floor below, missing the entire lower set of stairs. It was like a 10 foot drop. doG, I think my heart stopped.

 

I was watching him come up the stairs as he was slow and everyone was already at the top and when he started to go I lunged for him and missed. Holy crow, it was like time stopped. I don't think I've ever run down a flight of stairs so fast in my entire life and I scooped him up off the floor. He's completely fine - Sport's reaction time is a little, erm, delayed, and I think his general floppiness saved him from panicking when he fell, so he just landed in a big ole heap. I carried him up the stairs and into the elevator, and from now on, no matter how much he wants to do it himself, Sport is getting a lift up the stairs.

 

He's roaming around the deck now and looking hopefully at the fridge now and then so no harm done, except to my ticker!

 

Tell me about your near misses. This kind of stuff *cannot* just happen to me and my dogs!

 

A photo of himself for your trouble:

 

RDM

[Sue R]

No near misses to report here (well, Bute did get rolled by a calf kick tonight but he's so lightweight and flexible that he rolled and was up on his feet with no ill effects, and just more enthused to show them who is boss) but very grateful that old Sport is okay (and that you, hopefully, did not lose a year or two off your life when your heart went racing into overdrive).

[MickeyDogs]

My first dog fell 2 stories off a fire escape and got up and walked away, no harm done - to her! I was, of course, a basket case!

 

I lived in town next to an old school that had pigeons living on it. My apartment had a small side porch that opened out to the fire escape and my dog walked around the wooden railing of the porch to get closer to the pigeons. I was right there but not paying attention (duh!) when I heard her paws scrapping the floor. I turned around to see her clinging to the edge of the porch with her front paws (looking like Gilroy, for those of you **mature** enough to remember him ) and before I could do anything, off she went! She landed in the alley (on cement, of course) on her side, stood up and started trotting off down the alley. World record sprint down the fire escape on my part and a good recall on her part. Luckily no harm, no foul (except those dang pigeons! ).

 

Glad to hear Sport is ok from his "trip". That that doesn't kill us makes us gray!

[sweet_ceana]

Thank goodness he is ok! That is a long way for any one, let alone a 16yr old dog to fall. I don't think I could get up from that uninjured. The only near miss I have is the rimadyl OD in July, and we still don't know which of the two actually polished off the bottle.

 

One a side note, the discovery channel had a show that talked about the "time stopping," feeling. They had people bunjee jump and see if they could read a fast ticking digital timer better when their mind went into panic mode. They found that when you panic like that your mind fires even faster allowing you to process more data in less time. Thus, time seems slower.

[Kat's Dogs]

When Daz was a pup, must have been about 5 months, she took a misstep and fell in a lake. I could see her squirming around under the surface of the water, unable to figure out which way was up. I remember seeing her under the water and thinking "My puppy can't swim, my puppy is going to drown. here. now. today". It felt like it took me awhile to react but according to others I didn't even take time to put my camera down, I just jumped right in after her. Obviously, she was fine. Although I think it may have caused some of her swimming troubles later on...

 

Popcorn, my little old dog, seems to have close calls every other day. I swear this dog is invincible. If she was a cat and had nine lives, she still should have been dead about 5 years ago.

 

She was in a loft bed once (about 8' up) and all of a sudden she slipped and fell - despite her lack of flying skills, as soon as she landed she got right up and walked off.

She once ate a couple of huge dark chocolate candy bars (remember she is only 10 pounds) and didn't even get an upset stomach.

She somehow ate an entire jumbo container of hot chocolate mix.

She nearly got run over, twice, when she bolted out the door one day.

She has climbed up all kind of different shelving units and fallen off from various heights.

She has been inside the mouth of a German Shepherd that attacked her - one tooth went all the way through her muzzle including her tongue....

 

And that is just a partial list. Yikes, I think I'll stop thinking about all her near-death expiriences now.

[Ms.DaisyDuke]

OK, thank goodness he's alright. I hope you heart re-sets it's self! I could only imagine.

 

Daisy has never had any "near-misses", but there have been a few in the long line of dogs I've had. My mom's JRT was just a pup and didn't know what ice was yet. She went tearing off the edge of the dock onto centimetre thick ice and down she went. My mom freaked, told my lab to jump in (to break the ice) so she could grab the little JRT. Fortunately the water at this point was only a few feet deep, but cold enough and deep enough to kill such a small puppy. I've also had a lab/elkhound cross that missed my uncle running him over twice before he finally go him. My uncle still speeds down that road.

[Alaska]

Well. Now that my heart has returned to a normal rhythm....

 

Tell me you didn't have ferrets do that about twice a day. Really, they are the most accident-prone and yet accident-proof creatures I've ever shared a living space with. Walk off the edge of the stair landing - check. Pull bookcase down on top of self - check. Fall out the window and wander off to visit to the neighbors - check. Sleep on top of the blankets and go airborne across the room when the human flings the covers off to make a midnight bathroom call - check. Any damage? Never.

 

Okay, and just so you don't think you're the only one whose border collies like to cause heart attacks, here's a Biko story for you. Several days hike from the nearest road, in the wild and wooly North Cascades, we are making our way along the trail. Biko is carrying a pack, which as you can see roughly doubles her width:

 

 

Biko has terrific spatial sense. Some dogs can be annoying to pack with as they are forever running up behind you and whacking the pack into the back of your knee, but Biko always knows how much room to leave when she passes. I can pretty much trust her never to misjudge a distance...or so I thought.

 

So there we are, strolling down the trail, each minding our own business, when I look up and see the dogs about to barrel across this:

 

 

Biko, by the time I can react, is already forging across. Not wanting to alarm her, I mouth the word "Careful..." just as the pack slams into the post that supports the railing in the middle of the bridge. Instantly, the dog flips over backwards and plummets upsidedown straight towards those huge boulders in midstream. In my mind, her back is already broken, but before I can fully form that thought she's bolted out of the stream, up the bank, and is standing next to me shaking the water off, her border collie brain hard at work puzzling out what just happened.

 

Geesh, gives me the chills just thinking about it two years later.

 

The dog-who-vanishes-if-he-turns-sideways demonstrates that these bridges are wider than they look:

 

 

Nevertheless, I carried Biko's pack across all the rest we encountered.

 

P.S. I think Sport's bowlegged cowboy stance is just about the handsomest border collie pose ever. Glad he's turning out to be so durable.

[tualizzy]

Eeeeek!

Sport, buddy, careful on the stairs.

Food Lady doesn't need another heart attack.

 

 

Brassy has given me a couple heart attacks recently. I was playing frisbee with Jak in the yard. Our lawn is approx. 4.5 feet above a concrete patio, held back by a block retaining wall. I usually stand at the wall and toss the frisbee from there. Jak brings it back, licks my face & runs (his head is the same height as mine when standing there). Brassy decided she wanted to join in and came running over....but didn't stop at the edge of the wall... she kept going and fell right off, onto the concrete. (stupid me, didn't even think that perhaps she doesn't see that great anymore) I quickly scooped her up, she wiggled free, ran up onto the grass and started barking wildly... she still wanted the damn frisbee! Then a couple weeks ago we were playing frisbee at the neighbourhood school. Jak & Lizzy running around all crazy, Brassy trotting along, wagging her tail. All of a sudden she collapsed... crashed onto one side and didn't move. Craig & I rush for her... I thought she had had a heart attack and was about to die. Her breathing was heavy and she wasn't moving a muscle. Both of us are petting her, I'm bawling my eyes out (yup, I'm a bit of a freak about her).... then suddenly, as fast as she crashed to the ground, she was back up on her feet....wagging her tail. Needless to say the game of frisbee was over and we walked slowly home.

[afrancis]

Oh thank god he's ok RDM!! I can only imagine your panic!

 

My heart-stopping experience was with my first BC Riley running full tilt after a squirrel between two VERY large moving snowplows.

Ailsa

[BustopherJones]

Whereas we are all BC owners, it is probably unnecessary to explain how focused BC's can be, to the point of being oblivious to everything else around them. I was playing ball with Annie in a local dog park, and accidentally threw the ball into a grouping of small trees. WHAM!!! Going full speed to chase the ball, Annie ran headlong into one of the trees! When I got to her, she was stumbling around, and I was deathly afraid that she had seriously injured herself. A few minutes of holding and comforting, and she was back to normal, waiting for the ball to be thrown again.

 

Needless to say, I am a lot more careful nowadays about where I throw a ball...

[lance]

[it was not my dog, but I knew someone several yrs back that had 2 miniture pinchers that fell off a 3 story porch on grass and were not injured.

They must have been part cat!

 

Lance

[Root Beer]

Back when Speedy was a puppy and we lived in town, we used to take him and Sammie to this park frequently so he could run.

 

One day we got there and we saw a bunch of kids. They were having some kind of field day type event, so we decided to move on to a different park.

 

For some reason I can't remember, my husband moved the vehicle out onto the road and I came along and got in right on the road. Before I knew what happened, Speedy had shot out, he tore across the road, and ran off into the park!

 

Had a car been coming at that moment, it could have been very serious because the road made a turn right there and a driver probably wouldn't have seen him until it was too late.

 

That's the only near miss I can think of.

[DixiesDad]

So glad to hear Sport is OK. Now if only you can recover from heart stoppage

[MrSnappy]

Good morning all!

 

Sport is a-okay today. I thought for sure he'd be sore or something this morning, but he ran to the park pulling on the leash the whole way, as usual, and ran around after his pals getting snarked at by Tweed, also as per usual! No harm, no foul.

 

Of course, to add insult to injury, while I trimming nails last night I quicked him. Poor Sport, he must think I'm out to murder him!

 

RDM

[twmoose82]

One night I was walking Moose in the rain and we were crossing the street and he was trying to avoid a puddle (because he is a bit of a priss). Anyways as we crossed a car blew the stop sign and came roaring around the corner. I had to pull on Moose so hard and quick that he actually came up off the ground. He was about 2 inches from being hit by the car.

[JohnLloydJones]

He's completely fine.

 

I'm sure I'd be panic stricken if a dog of any age did that, never mind a 16yr old one. Glad to read that he is OK, though I would watch him for a day or two, just in case. No near misses of any significance with us -- the closest thing was walking right up to a rattlesnake that was sunning itself in the driveway of the nearby church. Until we were quite close, I assumed it was a child's toy and then suddenly I saw that it was real and we made a rapid change of course. I suppose we were no more than a second or two away from a frantic trip to the e-Vet.

[bc4ever]

My brother was inspecting a second story deck in Colorado when his Aussie went flying over the edge in hot pursuit of a squirrel. He was air born for what seemed like an eternity, finally landed and kept running, never missing a beat. My brother's heart skipped a few though! For Christmas that year I sent him a doggie Superman cape!

[KrisK]

Sport is one tough boy! Glad to hear he's okay and that you don't need to seek medical attention for your heart!! They never cease to amaze us, these BCs!!

[jamesqf]

Remember the cube/square law, or as the saying has it "the bigger they are, the harder they fall". Works the other way around, too. A fall that would kill a human might only bruise a BC-sized dog, while a ferret wouldn't even notice it.

[Wasi]

Oh wow, that must have nearly killed you! I'm so glad that Sport's ok! I know exactly how you felt - mine have tried to give me a stroke/heart attack so many times now that I can't believe I've survived them all!

 

Let's see...Wasi has been hit by a 3/4 ton truck...and didn't even have a scratch to show for it.

 

Cassie on the other hand is definitely part cat and is quickly working through her nine lives:

 

- twice she has managed to find homemade fudge (at my mom's at Christmas time) and eat it while we're at mass. She handled it fine the first year. Large amounts of vomit the second.

- while under my (ex)bf's supervision, she ate a very large quantity of rat poison at his family's farm. No side effects. Big vet bills.

- after a jerk of a wheaton terrier attacked her at a dog park, she ran away. Gone. This dog is lightening fast. I went screaming, running after her, in snowpants and full winter gear. Somehow she managed to cross a 6-lane major road at rush hour. Witnesses told me they'd never seen anything like that before. I later found her hiding under my car.

 

My Buddy was attacked by a pit bull in a park. He had puncture wounds in his neck. It was pretty bad - definitely the intent there was to kill, not just dominate.

[vaporflowers]

Ack! That story made MY heart seize up!

 

I don't have any stories about my border collies, but my Cairn Terrier Mugsy gave me quite a scare.

 

At the end of her little life, kidney failure had made her pretty frail. When I was a child, I wanted her to sleep in bed with me, and she would have no part of it. So I was happy to welcome her when she asked to be invited up during her illness. She even snuggled with me, which was unheard of, so she got bed privileges every night.

 

She was a frail, bony old dog at that point (like Sport) and did not do well on my slippery laminate floor. I laid down towels and rugs for her, but for reasons unknown to me, she decided to leap off the bed in the middle of the night onto the bare floor.

 

Her fragile little body was fine, but I nearly had a heart attack! I'll never forget the sound of her hitting the floor... UGH. She lost bed privileges for a while, and then I put pillows and dog beds all around my bed incase she jumped off, but she never did again.

[dogsofmenace]

Poor ol' Sport! Glad to here he's okay.

 

Panic, appropriately, makes me panic ALL the time. He rarely thinks before he acts....Yesterday I had an awful scare! I threw the frisbee for him, but the wind caught it and it went really far up. Panic leaped at least 5 feet into the air (missing the frisbee altogether) did a crazy twisting backflip in the air and landed hard on his back. Afterwards he was limping so I made him lay down so I could look at his leg, but five seconds later he springs up, limp gone, and runs to get the frisbee again. He's also gone after a ball and fallen upside down into a creek, slammed into the porch trying to catch a frisbee, and on more than one occasion leaped sideways at the tire jump and slammed into it, when I never even told him to take it.

[BustopherJones]

It is dangerous to presume that a dog has immediately recovered simply because it appears to resume normal behavior. Dogs (as we all know) are descended from wolves; and in a wolf pack dynamic, any sign of weakness can be fatal. Hence, injured dogs will sometimes hide their injuries (or, aAt least, the pain involved). Years ago, Missy sustained a total tear of the tendon in the knee of her rear leg that required extensive reconstructive surgery and rehabilitation. She could not walk normally, of course, but she never complained or whimpered, and made every effort to walk in a normal manner. When I drove her to the out-of-state location where the surgery was to be done, she again showed no sign of weakness. The canine orthopedic surgeon indicated that she must have been in excruciating pain; but he explained this pack dynamic to me as the reason for her behavior. His counsel with any injury was not to presume that the dog was fine, but also not to panic; simply exercise due diligence in continuing to observe the dog’s behavior for a while.

[dogsofmenace]

It is dangerous to presume that a dog has immediately recovered simply because it appears to resume normal behavior. Dogs (as we all know) are descended from wolves; and in a wolf pack dynamic, any sign of weakness can be fatal. Hence, injured dogs will sometimes hide their injuries (or, aAt least, the pain involved). Years ago, Missy sustained a total tear of the tendon in the knee of her rear leg that required extensive reconstructive surgery and rehabilitation. She could not walk normally, of course, but she never complained or whimpered, and made every effort to walk in a normal manner. When I drove her to the out-of-state location where the surgery was to be done, she again showed no sign of weakness. The canine orthopedic surgeon indicated that she must have been in excruciating pain; but he explained this pack dynamic to me as the reason for her behavior. His counsel with any injury was not to presume that the dog was fine, but also not to panic; simply exercise due diligence in continuing to observe the dog’s behavior for a while.

 

This is true. Hence, I did not continue to allow him to play, because I know dogs (especially BCs with their gogogo attitudes) often don't show pain. We went home after this and I kept an eye on him for the rest of the night. He isn't limping in the slightest and is behaving normally.

[BustopherJones]

dogsofmenace, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa maxima. I did not intend my comments to be targeted to you; as someone who is far more familiar with dogs than I am, given your involvement with rescue, it goes without saying that you have probably forgotten more about canines than I have ever learned. My comment was intended to be a general cautionary statement to those who might be less familiar with the pack dynamic. I humbly apologize if any offense was taken; rest assured that none was intended.