The Catablog was started to celebrate what’s good in life, and not to dwell on the bad, but sometimes an issue gets off the leash and I can’t control where it ends up. Below is an extract from an article in
The Age from February this year. I had heard about a French woman who’d had the first successful partial face transplant, but I hadn’t been aware of the reason she needed a new face in the first place. Be warned: reader discretion is advised.
Ms Dinoire, who still has difficulty moving or closing her mouth, described how she awoke last May to discover her horrible disfigurement after her Labrador chewed off the lower part of her face. She had been unconscious after taking sleeping pills in what many contend was a suicide attempt.
“On May 27, after a very disturbing week and with lots of personal worries, I took drugs to forget,” Ms Dinoire said.
“When I woke up, I tried to light a cigarette and didn’t understand why it wouldn’t stay between my lips. That’s when I saw the pool of blood and the dog.”
She looked at herself in a mirror and “couldn’t believe what I was seeing, it was too horrible”.
Her lips were gone, along with her chin and much of her nose, leaving her teeth and part of her lower jawbone exposed.
But maybe this is a happy story? Maybe, like Lassie, the Labrador realised its owner’s dire predicament and is actually responsible for saving her life? That’s what I’ll keep telling myself anyway, because the alternative is just too unpleasant to think about. The dog being a Labrador was the real surprise for me in this story; I mean, there’s a Rottweiler or a Pit Bull eating some toddler’s face off every second day, but I’ve never heard about a good old Labbie doing it, which is what makes me think it must have been trying to help. Either way, I’ll sleep better tonight knowing that the flesh-eating ambitions of my pet of choice begins and ends with the odd native bird, and that my face is way-hey-hey off-limits.
2 comments:
But maybe this is a happy story?
Hardly...
Maybe, like Lassie, the Labrador realised its owner’s dire predicament and is actually responsible for saving her life?
The daughter seemed to think so, at least initially. The hospital's lawyers have presumably made it clear to her since then that thinking so in public might not be in her family's best interest.
...I’ve never heard about a good old Labbie doing it, which is what makes me think it must have been trying to help.
I can imagine it seeing its pack-mother unconcious and dying and frantically trying to rouse her.
I can imagine it licking first, but seeing its licks having no effect, starting to panic and frantically becoming more and more violent, until flesh is torn.
And even after that, I can imagine it continuing, knowing it is causing damage, but knowing also that it must rouse her. But causing itself pain, so much pain, for every injury it inflicts on its pack leader, even knowing that it must.
So much pain that maybe it was a blessing when it was killed for what it did.
And this woman, whose life was purchased with the pain and blood of this animal who felt nothing but love for her? She decides to risk squandering this gift by continuing - having been told that it may jeopardise the success of her surgery - to smoke.
There is no circle of Hell sufficient to give her what she deserves for that.
I’ll sleep better tonight knowing that the flesh-eating ambitions of my pet of choice begins and ends with the odd native bird, and that my face is way-hey-hey off-limits.
Dogs have been known to guard the bodies of their masters, chasing away predators long after they (their masters) were in no condition to ever be hurt by them (predators) again.
Cats, on the other hand, are anecdotally rather good at determining when the large catlike object that they only keep around because it can open tins of meat has itself become a pre-opened tin of meat, and altering their behaviour towards it appropriately.
They are usually found to have started with the eyes.
Jeepers JJ! Tough day at work, mate? Intense!
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