“A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma -- Churchill”
My foundling dog just got more mysterious! We found him under my truck in eastern Colorado 15 miles from the nearest paved road and 30 miles from the nearest town after a hike. He wasn’t in too bad shape and his paw pads were too soft for a dog that had spent much time on the Colorado plains. We figure he had been dumped but why at that particular place, we don’t know.
From day 1 we noticed that he favored his left leg…he almost always holds it off the ground.
The leg slows him down a little and he doesn’t have much stamina but he still likes to run around.
Our vet thought it might be a ligament injury and took X-rays of the wrist. Those showed decreased bone density when compared to the right leg. He referred us to an orthopedist who though it might be a shoulder injury, which she said is something that labs are prone to, and suggested a CT scan and X-rays.
He surprised us all!
Those are projectile fragments. It appears to have gone right through the shoulder joint and shattered it. There’s no external scar that I can find. Somehow he survived that and was even nursed back to health. We think he was an indoor dog which makes the fact that he ended up in the middle of No Where, Colorado on the banks of the Apishipa River (which means “stinking waters” in Arapaho) on a hot September afternoon even more of a mystery.
We do call him our English archer because he has a massively over developed right shoulder and an underdeveloped right shoulder.
And he still hasn’t gone to the bathroom in my yard!