- Date posted
- Yesterday
Guilt over Dog Injury
I did a compulsion on my dog two days ago before her grooming appointment. she was yelping whenever i touched near her mouth so i kept touching to make sure i wasn't hurting her. eventually i stopped and gave her a break. because i kept touching her i washed around her mouth but i accidentally overwashed her and her skin got irritated. it didn't seem like a big deal so i brought her to the groomer and they said she had a huge rash around her mouth but kept grooming her anyway and didn't call me to pick her up. i brought my dog home to put coconut oil on the rash to soothe it and she lunged and tried to eat it. because she's small i didn't want her to choke or get an upset stomach i tried to pull it out of her mouth and she was barking and freaking out bc she could sense i was annoyed and frustrated since she never lunges to eat things. it all happened so fast and next thing i know, i look up and my dog's eye starts internally bleeding. i took her to the vet and they said that kind of injury (hyphema) only happens from blunt force trauma. she eventually went blind in the eye and had to get it surgically removed. to this day, the doctors are unable to tell what caused her eye to bleed, but since i was the last person that touched her, i link the action to me. I do not remember her thrashing around or hitting her head at all while i was trying to apply the ointment, but now i am blaming myself because if i hadn't overwashed her and accidentally given her the rash, i wouldn't feel that this all ties back to me. because maybe her eye would have been destined to bleed but i would have discovered it in a neutral situation, and not a situation where i'm the last person to touch her. this has sent me into very severe depression, and unfortunately i believe i'm going to rehome my dog because this completely traumatized and scarred me. I don't believe it is me giving into OCD, but I have to be honest that I can only take so much. I do not remember any blunt force trauma when I last touched my dog. And the groomer was very rude when i asked for video footage of her appointment to see if maybe it stemmed there.