THIS DAY DOG NEWS
(CNN)Deadly
flames licked all around her, but a heroic dog in a suburban Cincinnati
basement refused to leave her owner. Now that dog, a 9-year-old boxer
named Carmen, has a team of vets fighting around the clock to save her
life.
Carmen was injured Thursday
when a fire broke out in the basement of the home where she lived with
her owner, Ben Ledford, in Goshen Township, Ohio.
First
responders on the scene found Carmen, a 9-year-old boxer, on top of
Ledford, trying to shelter his face from the heat, smoke and flame,
according to CNN affiliate WCPO.
Ledford,
33, was taken to a hospital where he later died. Carmen ended up at
Cincinnati's Care Center, a critical care veterinary hospital, where the
vets there have placed her on a ventilator.
"She's
doing OK. Considering what Carmen has been through we think she's doing
as well as can be expected," Dr. Daniel Carey, a vet at the hospital,
told WCPO.
Carey
said Carmen is battling severe lung damage and is not strong enough to
breathe on her own yet. The doctors had hoped to get her off the
ventilator by now, but as of Sunday night, it just wasn't happening.
"It's
not unexpected that she's not ready to come off (the ventilator). It's
just that in our best case scenario (we thought) maybe we could've hoped
to get her off (Sunday) afternoon," Carey told WCPO. "Whenever they put
a patient on a ventilator they're looking at a 50-50 chance of getting
them off breathing on their own. The smoke ventilation cases are often
the hardest to manage off the ventilator."
Despite
her breathing problems, Carmen has shown improvement in other areas.
She is mentally alert and showing no signs of neurological problems, the
vet said.
"She's resting. She's very
heavily sedated so that she won't fight -- you know, that she's got a
tube down her trachea or windpipe. She seems very comfortable."
Ledford's
family and friends, while mourning the loss of his life, are still
doing what they can to help Carmen save hers. They've turned to
crowdsourcing website CrowdRise to raise funds
to help pay Carmen's hospital bills. On the site, they thanked the
doctors and expressed gratitude at the "generosity being offered to help
Carmen."
The hospital is also
providing updates on Carmen through social media, using Facebook to post
pictures of the dog resting on a pink blanket and keeping company with a
pair of stuffed animals.
Dr.
Marlo Anderson, another vet at the hospital who is caring for the dog,
told WCPO she was not at all surprised that Carmen tried to save her
owner.
"A lot of dogs instinctively
know when there's a crisis going on and so a lot of them do go to try to
protect their owners, so she very well may have been trying to protect
him," she said.
POPULAR POST
DONT PAY PREMIUM FOR "PREMIUM" DOG FOODS
A - C Dog Names
MOST POPULAR DOG IN AMERICA: No 1
0 comments:
Post a Comment