12lb Dog Attacked By 80lb Dog with No Collar

:*TL/DR / Summary at bottom of page*:

Hey all. This my buddy Piccolo- She's my baby, my emotional support animal, she helps me eat when the world feels too broken to bother. She's my perfect little bomb-proof dog. She listens so well, loves people, big dogs, cats- everything but small fluffy dogs due to her first owner (ironic that she only gets uppity with dogs that look like her heh..) Anyway I get off of work pretty late some days, so it's not uncommon that her final walk lands us outside in the pitch dark at midnight.

Unfortunately, this night would have a lesson in it- "You may be confident you can protect yourself from an 80 pound Rottweiler mix, but what if it doesn't go for you? What if it shoots straight out of the bushes towards your little 12 pound dog who's looking the other way? What can you do to protect her?"

Turns out the answer is- Not a lot. I wrestled him down and shoved my fingers in his mouth to try and choke him with his tongue, hoping he would gag or eventually need to breathe. But if you've ever tried to break up a dog fight you know, if that dog doesn't want to let go- it wont. All you can do is hope you can make yourself enough of a pain to draw its attention, which I must have done- It must have only been seconds. As soon as I felt his jaws loosen I smacked Piccolo out of his mouth, tossing her several feet away and held on as he immediately started to writhe and break out of my grip. We wrestled back a few feet before he gave up- both of us panting. It smelled like dirty dog and sweat and anal glands. I looked around for my phone; fortunately in the confusion I had dropped it, wrestled away from it, then wrestled back over to it, and I was able to snatch it up from the asphalt to call my roommate, Sky out.

By the way- my roommate is so amazing, even though they were shaking they managed to make a slip lead out of my dog's leash and call animal control for the rottie- I wanted to bring her straight to the emergency room but I wasn't going to let an un-collared dog back out into the night to potentially hurt someone else's animal.

(Shout out to my friend, Devyn, who drove over at 1:30 in the morning with an extra leash and offered to stay with the dog and talk to animal control so I could rush to the emergency room).

Piccolo was such a good girl through the whole thing, she kept trying to get up and help me (at this time leashed to the dog that had just attacked her), but she listened when I told her to stop and lay down and wait for animal control.

And I'm so glad she did. The Mueller VCA emergency room operated on her for 3 and a half hours; reporting a hernia, internal bleeding, strangulated intestines, and a "shredded" kidney. It feels inappropriate to say, but a bite so close to her spine could have left her paralyzed, and I'm so happy he missed. The wonderful doctors at Mueller were so dedicated and caring, and made sure she was comfortable and taken care of- the whole overnight staff was giving her attention and pets and reassurance while she was on the emergency table.

Thank you to everyone who's made it this far, I guess I'm kind of getting it all out as I'm typing this- apologies for the length. The vet bill is $6,696.93, and thanks to resources like CareCredit, I was able to pay the entire amount with an interest-free payment plan.

Here's why I'm asking for your help now- This attack happened only a week and a half before the end of my lease. A week and a half before I'm scheduled to chuck a suitcase and my pets into my car and move back to my hometown to be with my family during these difficult economic times. I've been trying to get a job lined up with no luck, so I'll have to hit the ground running to keep up with rent and these sudden payments.

We've started from $0 before, and we can do it again, but I've never started from -$7,000. It's gonna be hard, but we'll make it- Any little bit you can chip in to help will make the load that much lighter, and help Pico get the medicine and gentle food she needs to recover. Thank you so much for reading this far, but just in case you didn't-

here's a TL;DR:

My dog, Piccolo (12lb Maltese-terrier) was attacked by an Unnamed dog with no collar (80lb rottie mix), at 1am 10/18/23, two weeks before I'm supposed to pick up my pre-reserved U-Haul and move the two of us and her annoying younger brother (aka my cat, Gohan) 500 miles to my hometown to help support my family. Care Credit has allowed me to pay the bill for now, but moving 500 miles and starting a new job/lease is already quite an undertaking even without starting with $7,000 of debt. I ask if anybody has a little bit to chip in- a coffee for the long nights I'm about to have, a bag of soft treats for a recovering widdle baby, even .50cents adds up and will help get us to our new place safe and sound.

Thank you,

-Cooper and Piccolo

(P.S. No hate to the Rottweiler. Bullies are my favorite breeds and I love rotties. As soon as I had him leashed I realized he was obviously just an under-stimulated and under-trained apartment dog by the way he was respecting my space and my leash ques (though that might be because I just scared the shit out of him and wrestled him to the ground- twice). He wasn't aggressive with her afterwards but curious- and surprised when she yelped at him. This was just a powerful animal that was running free at night on a "haha I just busted out the door!" high, and unfortunately mistook my white ball of fluff as- well, what you would think. I hope he goes to a rottweiler rescue if the owner doesn't come forward- and if they do; Hi, I'm Cooper. It's hard when your dog attacks another animal- I've been there. I know a couple of trainers who specialize in bullies and stubborn breeds. Hit me up- you got this (760)7772156 )