Roxy made a mistake. As a middle-aged spayed lurcher she is usually comfortably sure of her own territory and its boundaries. But when Brutus the dog she hates from along the road came trotting into her garden she saw red.

She barked at the door and her owner let her out thinking she needed the toilet. Once outside she chased German Shepherd Brutus out of the garden and along the road. Usually she was content to see him out of the garden, but this time she chased him all the way back to his own garden.

Having retreated from Roxy's garden he finally made a stand by his own front gate. Roxy came off worst in the ensuing fight and a few minutes later her owner heard a rather pathetic whine at the door and opened it to find a bedraggled and chastened Roxy dripping blood over the doorstep. A sizeable piece of her left ear flap was missing.

His wife being out, her owner tried to apply some practical first aid, but with little success. Although the bleeding from her ear soon slowed to a trickle, as soon as it looked like stopping Roxy would shake her head, sending a shower of blood spots up the wall and starting the flow again.

Her owner telephoned me for advice and I explained that she needed a bandage around her ear to keep it still. Sadly, her ear was too sore and the usually placid Roxy snapped as soon as anything touched the ear. A few minutes later her owner rang back to say he had found a lift to bring Roxy to the surgery.

I gave Roxy a powerful painkiller and tranquiliser as soon as she arrived, but it was clear she needed a full general anaesthetic.

Once she was asleep I was able to wash and clean her ear properly and clip away the hair. The wound was every bit as nasty as it had looked with a jagged edge and pieces of the inner layer of the ear flap sticking out.

I took Roxy to the operating theatre and trimmed away the damaged edge to leave a smooth, rounded contour of undamaged skin and cartilage. Then I put a row of fine dissolving stitches in the cut edge of the skin. My nurse and I padded Roxy's ear with plenty of cotton wool and bandaged her ear flat to her head and gave her an injection of penicillin before we woke her up. She seemed more comfortable once she was awake and made no attempt to touch her ear.

Over the next 24 hours her ear gradually slipped out of the bandage so I removed it. I kept her tranquilised and in hospital for another day before I risked sending her home. When I did finally let her go home I made her wear a funnel-shaped plastic Elizabethan just in case her ear started to itch as it healed.

Her ear is healing nicely now, and in a few months' time when the hair has grown back it will hardly show. Whether she has learned her lesson about fighting is another question.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.