Animal Person

Before I met James I wasn't much of an animal person. Then I met and married James who is a HUGE animal person which is why we have a farm in our back yard :) After we were married we started getting animals starting with a dog. I soon learned I was more of an animal person than I thought. I don't like to see animals hurt, scared or stressed. I don't know if animals really feel all that stuff but in my mind they do feel all that stuff. So last week James and I decided that our turtles were big enough to live outside and not in a plastic box. James made them a small pen to live in outside. Because they are outside I forget to feed them. So last Thursday I was a outside and I kept thinking I needed to feed them. I checked on them a few times and they were doing good. Later on in the day after getting back from delivering cookies to my neighbor I decided that I needed to feed the turtles before I forgot. I got the lettuce and headed out to their new home. When I got to the pen the turtles where not in the pen and their where 2 holes dug in the front and back of the pen. These holes where way to big for a little turtle to dig. So I started looking for the turtles around the pen and didn't see them. Then I noticed my dogs on the grass and Zoey had something in her mouth playing keep away with the puppy. It clicked then and I knew exactly what Zoey had. I yelled at her and she dropped what was in her mouth which was one of the turtles. I picked up the turtle and assessed the damage. The turtle was still alive but part the the shell was missing on the right side. I put it in a box and called James because I was upset that the dogs got the turtles. I looked and looked for the second turtle but couldn't find it. When James got home that evening he was pretty sure the turtle was going to die because if they don't have their shell they get infections and die. Maybe it's the nurse in me who has to make everything better but I decided that I couldn't just let the turtle die without doing something to help it. So I cleaned off the wound, applied triple antibiotic ointment (aka neosporin) and wrapped it in gauze. The next day we looked for the other turtle and found it at the back of the house and it was totally fine. No marks on it at all. The hurt turtle lived for one more day and then died on Saturday. We burried him yesterday out by the pine trees.