What About The Dog?

The call came across as a “possible ETOH party, patient stated to the call taker that he didn’t know his name, he needed an ambulance, and you will find him in the back yard.” This seemed like an odd call to me, but my preceptor and his EMT partner didn’t seem too alarmed.

“Probably a drunk, maybe drunk and crazy, who knows,” he said. This seemed to be the running theme of the evening tonight, as we had transported a few psych patients and more than a few drunks already. It was nearing the end of our shift, about 4 am, and we were all tired and running out of patience.

The calm and emotionless voice of the dispatcher once again came over the radio advising us that police was responding and that we should stage in the area with the fire department. This is routine for any crazy person, as you never know who might be wielding a gun and shoot you as soon as you walk in the door. This type of apprehension and precaution is a little unfamiliar to me. My small town EMS and fire experience have been pleasantly free of gun-toting psychos for the most part. Aside from the occasional bar fight I have been fairly shielded from the more outrageous crazy people of the big city.

We arrived on scene at the same time as police and fire, all of us rolling up into this sleepy suburban area of town, probably drawing attention from neighbors within three blocks. We watched the officer go up to the door, knock and walk in, hand on his holster. He disappeared for few minutes then waved us in from the upstairs window. We grabbed our mountain of stuff; the monitor, red bag, blue bag, and cot and walked up the driveway with the firemen. It always strikes me as funny when we all arrive together, seven people total (four firemen and the three of us on the ambulance). It just seems like overkill sometimes.

We all squeeze up the stairs. I was expecting to hear some drunken asshole screaming from the back yard but it was quiet. We were immediately greeted by the cutest dog I had seen in a long time; a very light yellow lab, wagging his tail. He was looking for a good pat on the head and scratch behind the ears. He ran up to me to say hello and immediately struck me as a good dog, friendly and well trained; obviously well cared for. It eased my mind a little, as I fall under the school of thought that your pet is a reflection of you; that if your pet is friendly, smart, and well cared for then you probably are as well.

The dog was running from fireman to fireman getting petted and loved by each one. We had still not seen a patient. As usual, being the student, I was pushed up front to take control of the scene. I asked the officer what was going on. “Well, come on out back and take a look,” he said with that same sarcastic smirk that I seem to get from everyone as a student. More experienced emergency response types seem to delight in toying with students for some reason. I walked out the back door onto the deck which overlooked the back yard and “made patient contact” so to speak.

Laying in the back yard was our patient, shotgun by his side. What was left of his head was, to say the least, not anatomically correct. There was a significant amount of skull fragment and brain matter scattered throughout the back yard. I found the whole scene surreal and disturbing. My preceptor came out on the deck along with the firemen and his partner. “Is that what I think it is? Oh, yup it is.”

This was not my first exposure to what the textbooks call “obvious signs of death” but it shook me a little. It must have done the same to everyone else because the firemen all said they didn’t need to see that and went back inside. Since this was now a crime scene, we all went back inside so as not disturb the scene. The officer and the fire lieutenant went down to make sure the guy was dead, as expected he was.

Back inside was the dog, still looking for some attention. My first thought was why would this guy do this if he had such a great dog? Perhaps his problems outweighed the love his dog had for him or vice-versa. I was concerned for the dog, so I asked what would happen to him. The firemen had obviously been thinking the same thing and one of them said, “We’ve been talking, and if there is no family, we’ll have the officer bring it by the station, one of our guys will take him home. He’s too cool to go to the pound.” I felt relieved.

Suicide is sad, but it doesn’t really bother me. At least the guy did a thorough job and didn’t botch it, leaving himself permanently disabled and a drain on his family. I was genuinely more concerned about the dog. You would think that if I was going to be bothered by something, it would be the missing half of this guy’s head that was all over the yard, but instead it was the welfare of the dog. Is it wrong to be more worried about the dog? I don’t think so. The patient removed the need to worry about him quite effectively.