Emergency veterinarians are used to treating animals at their worst, yet one Colorado veterinarian doubted there was anything he could do to save one dog when he laid eyes on her.
This past Monday, a 12-year-old black Labrador Retriever named Polo was shot in the face by a burglar and lay bleeding on the floor all night until her family got home the next morning. They immediately rushed Polo to the VRCC Emergency Hospital, but when the team got a look at her, they were afraid nothing could be done to save the suffering dog.
“It looked like a bomb had gone off,” Dr. Don Beebe said. “You just felt so bad, this sweet black Labrador suffering injuries of this extent.” To get a better idea of the internal damage the bullet caused, they took X-rays and discovered how lucky Polo had actually been. “Got some initial X-rays of her head and we could see all the metal shrapnel throughout her mouth,” Beebe said.
The bullet fractured Polo’s jaw in two places, destroyed several teeth, and nearly severed her tongue, but the bullet somehow missed her brain and main arteries. “Yeah, it is a miracle. She’s lucky that it went just through her nose and into her mouth, and not near her brain or anywhere else where she could have long-term consequences,”emergency vet Taylor White said. “The path of the bullet narrowly missed two major arteries in her jaw bone, and she easily could have bled out and died, and it’s amazing that she’s still with us,” Beebe added.
So far, Polo has undergone two reconstructive surgeries and has stunned the team with her recovery. “We had to go in and remove the tooth fragments, the metal shrapnel embedded deep within tissues. Her poor tongue was almost ripped in two, but there was enough left to salvage,” Beebe said. “She surprisingly came in and was doing pretty well. When we got her on some pain medication, she was wagging her tail for everybody,” White said about Polo, who was able to go home just three days after the shooting
Watch the entire video below to see how far this dog has come in just a few days.
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[Featured image: KDVR]
Dog Makes Miracle Recovery After Being Shot In The Face is an article from: LifeDaily