Dog shot with arrow recovering in Lumsden

A stray dog that was shot in the back with an arrow is wagging her tail for visitors as she recovers at the vet clinic in Lumsden.

Caillin Rodonets runs a dog rescue group called CCResQs in a community north of Regina. She said they got a call from a woman who found a dog bleeding on her property. Although it was shocking to find a dog with an arrow embedded in its back, it was not the worst injury she has seen.

“Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon to see,” Rodonets said. “We see a lot of gunshot (wounds in) dogs. This is our first arrow through a dog that we’ve ever seen, but yeah, it’s nothing new.”

The tan female dog was rushed to TM’z Vet Clinic in Lumsden where they sedated her and did some x-rays to determine the extent of her injuries. That is when they discovered the arrow had barely missed her spinal cord.

“They said that she was the luckiest dog in the world – that is a quote straight from the vet there,” Rodonets explained. “Just the way that it missed her by nine millimetres, that’s not a lot, so she could very easily have been paralyzed or passed away.”

The dog they now affectionately call Arrow, has some trauma to her back and isn’t out of the woods quite yet, but she does seem to be doing well. She’s lapping up a lot of attention from her caretakers at the vet clinic.

“They pet her, they give her belly rubs, her tail wags every time somebody walks past the kennel to see her,” Rodenets said.

Arrow is still on a lot of pain medication but they aren’t sure if she will need surgery at this point.

“She can walk, yes, very slow, and not very far, but that gives us high hopes,” Rodonets commented.

CCRezQs is taking donations by email transfer, or people can call the vet clinic directly to donate under Arrow’s file. Any money collected will go towards paying for Arrow’s care and medical treatment in case she does need surgery. If she doesn’t need surgery, the group will use any remaining funds to help pay for the next severely injured animal in their care.

“We see these things, it’s not uncommon to see stuff like this and it kind of makes you lose hope in people sometimes,” Rodonets admitted. “But whenever a story like this is posted, whether it’s by us or another rescue, the response that you get is overwhelming.”

When the group contacted the local RCMP detachment, they found out that there had been a report about a dog shot with an arrow on Saturday, but she wasn’t found until Monday. Rodonets said they passed on the information they have to police and hopefully they can find out who did this.

Rodonets said they decided not to name the area because they don’t want the town to get any backlash over what happened.