What a dog will do to get out of a bath...

About 4:00 this afternoon, I was going to give Riley, our 9 year old Golden Retriever, a bath but when I went outside to get him, he was nowhere to be seen.  I called and called, but no sign of him, so I gave up.  Mom said he probably heard I was going to give him a bath and he ran!

After dinner and devotions, Savannah asked me if I had seen Riley yet. Come to think of it, no I hadn't. So I went outside and again called for him, but he didn't come.  I checked the tack room, the front porch, and any place I could think of, but still no Riley. So I started walking through the woods calling him. As I was walking, I thought back to all of the dogs we had lost through the years. I was starting to worry, so as I walked I started praying. By this time, Dad, Savannah, and Ethan had joined the search.

After walking for a little while I heard one bark. Riley's. So I called again. Two barks. He was somewhere on the neighbors property. I hollered to Savannah who had also heard the bark. We started off in the direction of the bark, Savannah through the woods, and me on the trail. Everytime I hollered, "Riley!", we heard two barks in reply. Pretty soon, Savannah hollered that she had found him.

His front leg was stuck in a trap. 

 

By this time he was very excited to see us and was pulling on the trap's chain which only hurt him more.  I tried to keep him calm, while Savannah ran back home to get Dad.  When Dad got there, he was able to open the trap, but not without a fight from Riley.  You could tell we were hurting him by trying to get the thing off.  Once it was off, he was able to walk/limp on it.  Pop, Gram and Mom showed up by this time with the golf cart, so he was able to ride on the cart for the trip home.  When we got him home, we gave him some pain medicine and soaked his foot in epsom salt.  It didn't puncture the skin, but it did cut the circulation off to his leg for about 4 hours.

Riley resting after the whole ordeal

He gave us all quite a scare (and quite a few tears, I might add) before we got him out of the trap, but through the whole thing we have several praises:

1. The trap didn't have teeth. 

2. We found him about one hour before it got dark, which would have made looking for him even harder.

3. Dad was still home to get him out of the trap (he was just about to head off to his Bible study)

4. Riley knew enough to keep barking!

Posted by Kelsey