Hi, my name is Elisabeth. Me and my family are blessed with a five year old bird dog mix (he looks like a mix between a Border collie and English setter), called Risky. He's a sensitive and sceptical little guy, but full of love and affection. We all love him dearly.

Sadly, last Wednesday when I was taking Risky out for a walk, he got attacked by an unleashed male dog. It all happened very fast, and even though Risky wasn't unleashed there was no way I could have prevented it from happening. The other dog was a Bull terrier; he bit Risky's right front leg and several painful minutes went before he would let go. I won't go into details how his legged looked but when we got to the vet the first thing she said was that this was the most horrible case of mutilation she had seen.

An amputation seemed obvious, but after examining him they found that the nerves wasn't broken. Together with the vets we decided to try saving his leg. He was given strong antibiotics and pain-killers and the leg was heavy bandaged, completely immobilized.

Today was the day of the operation, and the intention was to try to fix his leg further, but it was so infected that the chances were slim, and would involve a lot of pain, healing time… yeah. In short; an amputation was evidently the best choice for our Risky, and everyone at the vet agreed. They are now finished with the operation, everything went well and tomorrow we'll bring him home.

Naturally, this has been very hard for the whole family. It's all so meaningless and unfair, but now that we'll soon have Risky back with one less leg needing our affection and help more than ever it won't help anyone being sad and think “what if”. I am very happy to have found this forum, and the little I've been reading on here has given hope and encouragement. I'm now eager to see Risky again and make him feel as comfortable and loved as possible.