A PET owner has been landed with a £6,500 vet’s bill after her uninsured dog was impaled on a piece of metal that had been dumped on East Hill.
Annette Siddle says her one-year-old pointer Mo is lucky to have survived horrific injuries and the life-saving seven-hour operation that followed.
She rushed the pup almost 40 miles to a specialist vet in Somerset where a surgeon worked through the night.
Mo suffered a punctured lung, stomach and diaphragm.
Ottery Library assistant Annette, who blames fly-tippers for the ordeal, described how a routine walk in woods on East Hill Strips ended in terror last Thursday.
“I just heard him screaming,” she said. “It was a nightmare - he managed to pull himself off whatever it was and come back to us but there was so much blood, it was unbelievable.”
Surgeon Mickey Tivers, at Cave Vets in Wellington, said Mo was ‘very lucky’ to have survived.
“He narrowly avoided injury to his heart, aorta and left kidney,” he said. “It was undoubtedly one of the most severe injuries I have seen in a dog.”
Annette said she had since been back to the woods and found the piece of discarded metal, believed to be from an old lawn mower, that had nearly killed her dog.
She added: “It was a metal rod in a pile of car parts and things like that - it looked like it had been there for a while.
“I’m incensed at these lazy, selfish fly-tippers – they don’t care as long as they’ve got rid of their rubbish.
“Dog walkers shouldn’t have to worry about what people might have dumped.”
A district council spokesman said 619 cases of fly-tipping have been reported across East Devon in the last 12 months and East Hill is a recognised ‘hotspot’.
He added that regular checks were made in the area and staff aimed to remove the majority of fly-tipped items within 24 hours.
“Fly-tipping is a serious crime and we always look to catch and prosecute those committing it,” said the spokesman.
He urged the public to contact the council if they have any information that could help track down offenders.
Have you seen rubbish dumped on East Hill Strips or elsewhere in the Ottery area? Please email me on harvey.gavin@archant.co.uk
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