Farm Fresh: Shark Learns a Hard Lesson

 Shark is a great guard dog. She has great instincts, is intelligent and wants to work. She has learned a lot and understands what I am telling her to do... except when she is in hot pursuit of a "dangerous" intruder.  Then it is all instincts, speed, and focus for her. She came to us with a car chasing problem. If I am outside, I whistle and say "treat" and she knows that if she doesn't chase the car down the driveway and goes up on the deck she will be rewarded. She almost always listens to me.  The problem comes when packages are delivered and I am unaware/not outside.  She is free to roam within the yard and she is outside all the time. She has chased many a delivery truck.   Her sister Icy, even smarter than her I would say, understood from the first couple weeks at our house that chasing cars down the driveway was bad. AND she always tries to stop Shark from doing it. Icy graps Shark by the base of her tail every time and she tries to pull her back!  It is a testimony to how smart they are.
**These pictures are post veterinary care -- they shaved her face to assess the wounds accurately**

 Unfortunately, this week Shark got too close to a truck.  We don't know exactly what happened because we didn't see it.  When I first saw her her mouth was full of blood and bleeding during the whole hour long ride to the vet. Her eyes, especially the right side, were so swollen that she couldn't open them. All the injuries appeared to be to her head/muzzle.  The vet thought her jaw might be broken, but several x-rays later it turned out to be all soft tissue wounds. Her teeth and jaw were still intact, she was just very bruised and swollen.  These pictures were taken more than 24 hours after the accident. The swelling was mostly gone by then.

 We kept her separated from her best buddy and sister Icy to recuperate calmly until today.  I finally let her go down by herself to spend time in the yard.  She is on antibiotics, pain meds, and an eye ointment.  Hopefully she learned her lesson.  Just in case she didn't, we will be repositioning the "packages" crate down at the end of the driveway. Hubby just needs to make some kind of a rain roof for it.