One Eared, Cone Headed Dog

We had a pretty traumatic day on Monday. Dave left our house and went to our neighbors that live on the corner. He left Zeke outside as we so often do. About five to ten minutes later he heard a terrible sound and then he saw that Amy was calling him...bad sign. Zeke for some reason was digging under our chain link fence (usually if he wants to get out bad enough he'll just jump). Well, his ear got stuck on the fence and he must've tried to free himself and realized he was stuck (first set of screams). Amy ran outside "not knowing what she was going to find" and saw that Zeke was stuck. Right after she got to him to try to help he yanked again, freeing himself, ripping his ear in the process (second set of screams). Amy told him to go to the front gate and like a good boy, he did (and then she called Dave). By now, another neighbor has come over so they are calming Zeke down when Dave arrives. Dave goes back to the fence to see if any part of Zeke got left behind...just a HUGE clump of fur. Dave then took Zeke to the vet (at this point Zeke seems to be okay...Dave says "let's go for a ride" and Zeke jumped right up into the truck). Dave calls me on the way and tells me what no parent wants to here (I don't care if my "child" is really a pet, you still don't ever want to hear this)...Zeke is hurt. The vet keeps Zeke to see if there is enough blood flow to sew the ear back together. If not, it's snip, snip, good-bye ear. About six hours later Zeke is ready to come home with one ear about a third shorter than the other. He still got stitches and the hateful cone. It's especially obvious he is missing part of his ear b/c they had to cut off so much of his ear hair but when it grows back, I'll bet one will hardly notice. Anyway, I was fine all day until I saw cone head and then I lost it. Poor little guy. Of course, his tail was wagging and really, I needed that hug more than he did! Since Monday he's been doing really well. The cone is bothersome but he tolerates it. It can come off as early as Monday and the stitches should dissolve in 2-3 weeks.

Poor Amy has been through more traumatic stuff with our dog than we have. Last time she dog sat Zeke caught a squirrel! I always said he wouldn't know what to do with it if he ever caught one but he sure had something in mind. He pretty much broke the squirrel's back but didn't finish it off before Amy could get him away. We owe Amy huge...first semi-dead squirrel and then piercing screams and blood)! Speaking of broken backed squirrels, yesterday (on my day off, I now work 4 days a week...woohoo!) Amy came to the fence and said there was an injured squirrel in front of her house. Sho 'nough, there's this poor squirrel dragging itself across the street with it's front legs. The only thing we can figure (since Zeke has a cone on his head and is banned to the back yard or house and supervised at all times) is that it fell out of a tree. It proceeded to drag itself across the yard across the street and then it climbed UP the fence! I called animal control but by the time they got there, we couldn't find Gimpy. I'm curious though, what would you have done in that situation? Would you have been able to put it out of it's misery? Would you have called your husband to do the dirty work? Would you let it be and let nature take it's course? I'm interested...

What's that you say? I can't hear you.

I'm homing in on it.
Do you like my bonnet?

I'm getting pretty good reception now.