When I went to do dog chores yesterday morning, I smelled blood. Never a good sign.
Since Greyhounds are fast and active with tissue-paper skin, surface injuries are common enough. Whether from running into a branch, snagging themselves on the fence, or each others' teeth when they get carried away while playing, the results are the same. So I check them over and find nothing.
Maybe somebody ate something nasty and had a bloody blowout in a corner somewhere. So I check the floor thoroughly, with a flashlight in the dim corners, and find nothing.
Okay, so who caught something outside and killed it? But there are no signs of a struggle, no blood, no hair, no leftover body parts, indoors or out, and no fleas on any of them. Wild game that can fit through the fence and get into the turnout always comes with fleas.
By this time, I really need to get to work, so I figure I'll run the same drill when I get home, only more so.
But last night, despite crawling around indoors and out with my LED headlamp and reinspecting every square millimeter of every dog, I find absolutely NOTHING. Of course, by then the blood smell was gone.
Yes, I know what blood smells like. Between working in a morgue and a slaughterhouse at various times in my nefarious past, I so know what blood smells like.
Another one of life's little mysteries? I'm getting pretty tired of 'em.
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The other night Barkley wouldn't go in the yard for one last pee before bedtime. I have a half acre of it fenced just for him, so he can run free and safely (and stay out of the pond unless I want to let him swim, and not bother any of the other critters.
I didn't understand. I stood out there and then heard it. Coyote pack and the sound of some small animal being torn apart.
Large pack, and close. He and I both stayed in that night.
Mysteries like that are always worrisome, especially when you can't solve them.
Coyotes don't tent to pack-up out here all that often, except at calving time. Emma's (GSP) not all that concerned about yelps in the night from them but Mags (Boston) is, and for good reason. That last "potty out" of the evening is always done with me, armed, in attendance.
About half the time I experienced this problem with my German Shepard (if I solved it) it was an inside the mouth cut. I never smelled blood but would find drops and splatter.
Sometimes the house / garage / yard would look like a crime scene if he had a particularly onerous bone or stick to destroy.
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