By Samantha Swindler / Managing Editor
Thirteen years of veterinary work, and it’s the strangest thing Dr. Keaton Smith’s ever seen.
Young Smokey, a four-month-old Chihuahua, was rushed to the Cumberland Valley Animal Hospital in London Tuesday evening with a large, meat fork lodged several inches into his brain.
And, aside from the obvious fork jutting from his skull, the dog seemed fine.
“The dog came in licking and eating and walking and acting normal,” Dr. Smith said.
Smith said Smokey’s owners came running into the animal hospital at around 7 p.m. Tuesday just as the clinic was closing.
Two days prior, Smokey’s owner was feeding her brood of dogs, dishing out the dog food using the large, dull fork. In the process, the metal prongs came loose from the fork’s handle, and her downward arm movement flung the fork at Smokey’s head — and into his skull.
The dog immediately ran off and his owners were unable to catch him. They gave Smokey up for dead — until he wandered back to the driveway Tuesday evening, seemingly acting fine. The owners immediately scooped him up and took him to the vet.
“We took about 12 radiographs of the skull and tried to identify exactly where (the fork) was, but it seemed to be lodged in the grey matter of the right lobe,” Smith said.
Smith anesthetized the dog, gloved up, and after about a 30-second little pull, popped the fork out.
“Four or five drops of blood and that was it,” Smith said. “It wasn’t a very sharp fork, it was very blunt, and the way it went in, it just kind of separated all that tissue... it had already clotted where the damage had been.”
Smokey’s right eye was a bit unfocused and droopy after his surgery, but Smith said the dog appeared to be recovering fine and was sent home Wednesday. He said Smokey had some brain damage, but it didn’t appear to change the dog’s temperament.
“I don’t think the dog will be out of danger for at least six weeks,” he added.
Because of the risk of infection, blood clots or worse, Smokey is on strict bed rest for the coming weeks.
With more than a decade spent as a veterinarian, Smith’s seen a dog hit by a train, that lived; a dog hit by lighting that made it home; and a dog that drowned in a pool and survived after its owner performed CPR.
But Smokey, he said, tops them all.
“This is the strangest thing I have ever seen,” Smith said. “I told them (the owners) that if they aren’t going to church, they need to start...They’re like the rest of us, they are very speechless.”
