HONIAHAKA NORTHERN INUIT DOGS
Home of the Northern Inuit Dog and Wolfalike Dogs in the UK
Drake's Journey
This story features some graphical images!
People often ask me about the scars Drake has on his head/face and the most noticeable one on his left eye.
Drake left here as a puppy to have a new life with friends of ours, such an amazing puppy who would eventually be used in our breeding program when he was older.
He lived a happy 9 months on a farm where he had other Inuit's to grow up with, he also had a Caucasian shepherd puppy brother who was a few months older than him to play with. A life of riley with his own cottage to sleep in where he could come and go no matter the time of day.....what a life.
Sadly when he was just a year old and after a few scuffles between him and his house buddy, a big fight broke out and sadly Drake bore the brunt of it, vet visits were needed for both boys and after a series of conversations, we said to bring Drake back to us where we could hopefully help him mend.
I wont lie, when he turned up and i saw the extent of his injuries my heart sank into my stomach. I contacted my friend who is head nurse at our vets and got him booked straight in the following day for a consultation to see what we were dealing with.
Once at the vets, it was looking a bit grim. He was rushed into theater where, his face was cleaned of all the infection that had built up on his head above his right eye. There was such a hole in his head that they prepared me for the worse and talked about the possibility of him need a face lift.
Now as he was just 13 months old at the time they wanted to try the natural approach to see if they could heal him enough before thinking about surgery. Sadly they said there was nothing we could do with the left eye and only time would tell if it caused him any eye issues, but at the time they couldn't see any damage to the eye itself.
They used medical grade manuka honey and stitched a Special swab onto his head which needed to be replaced every 2 days to begin with then every 3 days, every time he went he needed sedation so they could deep clean and re stitch, I felt so sorry for my gangly teenager, but he took it in his stride. With a strong course of antibiotics the other wounds started to heal as well.
After a week or so we were all able to see an improvement in the wound itself, so this treatment carried on and the likelihood of a facelift was becoming less and less with each dressing change.
By week 5 the scabs formed and the rest of the healing process began.
By the end of week 4 he didn't need to have the dressing on anymore and it was just a waiting game to see how the end result would look.
While we were back and forth to the vets every few days and getting good results with his external injuries, we also knew we had some internal injuries to deal with and we were sadly loosing the battle with his psychological injuries.
Psychologically Drake was struggling, even though he knew us and was back where he was born, he didn't have the freedom he was used to and found it extremely hard to adjust to being indoors so he could heal. It would sometimes take us hours to get him to come into the house at bed time, we would have to leave the back door open and coax him in, it was January and wet and cold, there's no way we could leave him outside. Myself and Andy took it in turns to sleep downstairs with him and tried our hardest not to get frustrated and despondent with the slowness of his phycological recovery. At times we felt we were failing him and didn't know if we were the right people to help him recover.
This is when our friend came in to help, Denise at White Raven is a animal reiki master and a animal communicator and helped us in the past with one of our wolfdogs. Denise would come and give Drake some healing at ours and carry on with distance healing as well. She used her communications skills with him and helped us turn a dog who was on the verge of being reactive to every dog he saw, to a boy within 4 months who was willing to meet and get to know other dogs. She mentioned that a lot of drakes issues were the fear of being abandoned and the fear of missing out, he for some reason needed to know where everyone was all of the time, and this included every dog on the farm. As the months went on we found the only time this boy would settle was when everyone was was put to bed, then he would eventually settle himself.
I wont lie but at times we felt like giving up, it was hard work trying to pander to his needs when we had so many other animals that needed our time too, it caused a lot of stress within the house with the other dogs, but we knew deep in our hearts that we couldn't let him down.
Our friend Angela Day from the Born to run canine Massage also stepped in to help us with drakes physical rehabilitation, the poor boy was so battered and bruised that she helped release a lot of the tension and stress
he was carrying along with the injuries to his muscles. Angela also ran a Homeopathic remedies workshop which we took Drake along to, we didn't know how he would react to dogs or people, but everyone attending had been briefed about our boy and were all so supportive.
Angela helping relive some pain and tightness during a massage session.
Finding what would help him with his anxiety levels at the Homeopathic Workshop.
We chose Eden to be Drakes healing buddy, she's great at reading other dogs body language, and is very playful and will initiate play with shy or nervous dogs. She was the perfect choice, and before long Drake had latched onto her and you could see his confidence start to grow.
As time went on, we introduced drake to more and more of the pack, we found out which dogs he was happy to be with and which he couldn't tolerate.
As you can see in these photos, the hair grew back around drakes scars and visually everything looked much better.
We had our ophthalmologist down to do the eye tests for our pack, I was so very worried about what he was going to tell me about drakes eyes. Our general vets had looked and couldn't see any issues or scars on the eye itself, but we knew the rip on his left bottom eye could be an issue.
James told us that Drake was an extremely lucky dog, just a millimeter over and he may of lost his eye, sadly we are always going to have a drainage problem though, due to the extent of the damage to his lower lid, this is why you see a brown stain down the front of Drakes face, something that can only ever be removed by expert photographic editing in photos. Drake passed his eye test and was issued a grade 1 goinoscopy.
Mentally Drake struggled, he was just a year old when the attack happened, one of the worst times in a young males development. At first he would shout at any male dog who came in eye shot, after a lot of hard work, he realised that not all males were going to cause him issues. A few years on and drake is happy to be out on pack walks with all types of dogs, he does however still become insecure when he comes in contact with large brown fluffy dogs, this includes our Jimmy.
Its been a long road to recovery, and every year around the same time Drake seems to have regression issues where he becomes very stressed, we have learnt how to get him though the month of January using a lot of tender loving care and a change in his routine, once he is past this time of year he is back to being our loving loyal big cuddle monster.