While no two animal shelters are alike, they often involve a lot of teamwork. A huge component at one of the animal shelters I work for is the role of Animal Control Officers, or ACOs, as they are often called. ACOs have many roles, one of which involves responding to calls from the public regarding animal related issues such as bites, loose animals and animals that have been hit by a car (otherwise known as “HBC”) to name a few.

One morning an officer responded to a call from a person who was bit after trying to help a HBC dog. The officer completed a bite report at the scene and brought the dog in to the shelter for immediate veterinary evaluation.

When “Spud” arrived at the shelter, he was evaluated and found to have suffered an injury to his spinal cord as he was completely unable to use his back legs and didn’t show any signs of sensing pain in those legs either. He was in a tremendous amount of pain but was otherwise stable from our evaluation. We offered Spud relief from his pain with a medication while we discussed what to do.

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