- Location
- Wormingford, Essex
After a bit of advice on how to handle this please.
Yesterday we had a dog get in with our 3 rams. Luckily we heard the barking and shouting from the yard and I flew down on the quad to see what was going on. I found a dog in the field with his jaws sunk into one ram who was trying to get away, the other two nearby running around too. The dog's owner arrived at the same time as me and straight away was very apologetic. I went after the dog shouting and eventually managed to get hold of it in a brief moment that it had let go of a ram. Initially injuries to the rams didn't look too bad, the owner took hold of his dog and was still apologizing. He gave me his name and two telephone numbers and told me that he would pay whatever the vets bill was. His story (and I don't doubt it) was that he'd been at the rec ground watching the football and the dog slipped its lead and made its way across the fields to our rams with the owner giving chase.
He left afterwards and I went to check some of our in-lamb ewes in the nextdoor field but thankfully they were okay. We went back to the rams and had a closer look and ended up getting them in and calling the vet out. One appears to have escaped unharmed, the second has several punctures to the face, ear and scrotum, the third had a really nasty tear to the bottom of the scrotum and only a thin layer of tissue holding his testicle in. The vet cleaned him up, removed the torn section and stitched him up.
This all leaves me in a bit of a dilemma on how to proceed with the dog owner. The vet has provided a detailed report having inspected all three and has made it quite clear that the fertility of each of them is likely to have been reduced. So I'm left with a £300 bill from the vet and three fairly expensive rams that could potentially be infertile. We have insurance ourselves for such things but haven't yet reported to the police. I feel I should phone the dog owner tonight to keep him informed.
What should I do? The vet has suggested prosecuting.
Yesterday we had a dog get in with our 3 rams. Luckily we heard the barking and shouting from the yard and I flew down on the quad to see what was going on. I found a dog in the field with his jaws sunk into one ram who was trying to get away, the other two nearby running around too. The dog's owner arrived at the same time as me and straight away was very apologetic. I went after the dog shouting and eventually managed to get hold of it in a brief moment that it had let go of a ram. Initially injuries to the rams didn't look too bad, the owner took hold of his dog and was still apologizing. He gave me his name and two telephone numbers and told me that he would pay whatever the vets bill was. His story (and I don't doubt it) was that he'd been at the rec ground watching the football and the dog slipped its lead and made its way across the fields to our rams with the owner giving chase.
He left afterwards and I went to check some of our in-lamb ewes in the nextdoor field but thankfully they were okay. We went back to the rams and had a closer look and ended up getting them in and calling the vet out. One appears to have escaped unharmed, the second has several punctures to the face, ear and scrotum, the third had a really nasty tear to the bottom of the scrotum and only a thin layer of tissue holding his testicle in. The vet cleaned him up, removed the torn section and stitched him up.
This all leaves me in a bit of a dilemma on how to proceed with the dog owner. The vet has provided a detailed report having inspected all three and has made it quite clear that the fertility of each of them is likely to have been reduced. So I'm left with a £300 bill from the vet and three fairly expensive rams that could potentially be infertile. We have insurance ourselves for such things but haven't yet reported to the police. I feel I should phone the dog owner tonight to keep him informed.
What should I do? The vet has suggested prosecuting.
