On Thanksgiving afternoon Monday, Drummond & I left the farmhouse to herd the sheep into the barn for the evening. Our livestock protection dog, Hogan, watched his sheep run into the barn but refused to accompagny them from the back field. This is highly unusual, as Hogan is trained to stay with his sheep at all times. Thinking that something was serious wrong, I ran into the field only to find the big dog playing with (tasting... I think) a large Canadian goose.
The goose had a broken wing, but otherwise only minor lacerations. Drummond & I hurried Hogan away and decided to give the goose a chance at rehabilitation. A protection species in Canada, we would have had to had gotten a permission from the game warden to kill it anyhow... and on a holiday!
We dressed his wounds and placed the wing. We crated him in a warm bed of straw in the storage area of the barn and gave him electrolytes and corn/oats. He was content and ate. The pain was therefore not terrible, if he ate and drank and was lucid.
On Tuesday afternoon, Joanne took Sweeney the Goose (yes, I name EVERYTHING) to a vet for the Nichoir Bird Sanctuary in Hudson. The vets there decided that the wing could not be repaired and stated that a goose cannot live well with only one wing as they need them both for balance. Sweeney was therefore euthanized humanely and Hogan will have to get over his taste for goose!
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