Wednesday 9 May 2018

Dog bite scars

Tyson has two serious scars from dogs: one on his right wrist from Razor, one of the service dogs that he trained for the army, and one on his left shoulder from Lily, his pet Dalmatian-Dhole.
Give that the former was received whilst Tyson was in a well-stocked army compound and the latter whilst travelling on his own through the desert as a wanted man, most would expect the scar from Lily to appear worse and hurt more. Whilst the scar on his shoulder is hypersensitive, the scar from Razor is far messier.
Tyson was able to give the bite from Lily his immediate attention and the wound was a clean bite. She released him almost immediately after her teeth bit into Tyson. Nerve damage caused the wound to become hypersensitive, but the actual bite mark healed smoothly.
Razor did not release Tyson quickly. He jerked Tyson arm around roughly - as he was supposted to. They were working on bite training at the time, but Razor grabbed the wrong (unpadded) arm - and it was a miracle that the German Shepherd didn’t inflict more damage before finally releasing him, then Tyson was forced to wait around for the doctor to return before his wound could get proper attention.
Tyson had basic first aid knowledge, but not enough experience to handle such a bad wound properly. He was also disadvantaged by having his dominant hand attacked, as it wasn’t until after Razor lashed out that Tyson started along the path towards becoming (near) ambidextrous.
In neither of those instances does Tyson blame the dogs, he made a mistake - the same mistake both times, failing to notice the signs of heatstroke - and then the dogs lashed out. It was his mistake, not the dogs’ fault. A good dog trainer can go their entire carrier without ever getting bitten.