Canine airlift saves flood-stranded kelpie
19:28 AEST Mon Jan 17 2011
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Getting back on your feet In the southeast Queensland town of Chinchilla, a little red working dog is embodying the spirit of Queenslanders enduring the state's worst ever floods, and that old saying - you can't keep a good dog down.
Carrie the red Kelpie went missing amid last week's flooding, only to return home at the height of the emergency with a gash in her chest where she was most likely kicked by a kangaroo.Her owner, David Winfield, desperately needed a vet for his favourite dog, but his property 20 kilometres out of town was cut off by floodwaters.
Chinchilla vet Ryan Ayres did his best to give Mr Winfield directions to care for Carrie over the phone on Wednesday, but the situation was dire.
Mr Winfield tried and failed to have Carrie ferried to town on a SES boat, and eventually talked a helicopter pilot who was moving cattle into a canine airlift on Thursday.
"We were getting a little bit worried about her at that stage," he told AAP.
"We could stick four fingers into her lungs."
Dr Ayres said when Carrie finally reached him, he was shocked to see she was surviving despite a wound as big as two fists.
"It was the biggest chest wound I've ever seen that didn't involve broken ribs," he said.
"We could hear the dog's lungs hitting the sides of her ribs when she was breathing."
Surgery was successful, and Carrie will be allowed to go home when the floodwaters around her property have receded, in about a week.
Dr Ayres said the seven-year-old dog was one of the toughest he had seen.
"But I'm glad they got her to me because I don't think she would have made it another day," he said.
It has been an intriguing time for the Tennessee vet, who started a six-month stint at Chinchilla in November.
He expects his next big emergency will be a wave of footrot in cattle that have spent weeks standing in flooded paddocks.
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