A retired construction worker fell deep asleep one night. He slept so soundly that nothing could wake him up. Only hours later did 64-year-old David Lindsay of Cambridge, United Kingdom, wake up when his wife screamed. David was asleep on the sofa, but when he woke up, he found that his adorable puppy had chewed his big toe down “to the bone,” and his right foot was covered in blood.
The puppy, Harley, had chewed on David’s toe so much while he slept that the dog, a seven-month-old bulldog puppy, had fractured the toe and left it so the big toe had the toenail hanging off of it. It was a horrible sight to behold for both David and his wife, who was the one to find the dog chewing at his foot.
David was rushed to the emergency room following the incident, and that’s when he learned from the medical professionals that his dog might have saved his life. Apparently, David had lost feeling in his feet while he was sleeping on the couch in his living room, and blood had stopped flowing to his lower extremities.
In fact, doctors told David that two arteries in his legs had been blocked and were no longer carrying his freshly oxygenated blood to the lower half of his body. If it was not for his naughty puppy, David might have suffered a heart attack, a stroke, or something like a pulmonary embolism. Clearly, the little bulldog had saved his life.
While critics felt like David should have gotten rid of Harley because the puppy had been chewing on his foot until he started bleeding, David decided to keep the dog since the pup actually saved his life. If the puppy had not been chewing on his big toe, gnawing him down to the bone, then David might have suffered a worse problem that could have ended his life.
As a father of five daughters and a grandfather to eleven small children, David has a big family and would be sorely missed if he passed away.
“I was asleep on the couch when my wife walked in and shouted, ‘Dave, the puppy’s chewing your toe!’ My puppy had near enough chewed my big toe off! It chewed down to the bone and cracked it. But because of all this, I discovered that my foot is completely numb; I can’t feel anything.”
David struggles with diabetes. His wife knew that the toe had to be dealt with, so she bandaged it up and then drove him to the hospital. While at the hospital, David told the medical professionals that he could not feel his foot, so doctors ran CT scans and found two blocked arteries.
In addition to premature death, David could also have been at risk of getting his leg amputated if blood flow had been stopped.
Thankfully, cute Harley saved David’s life, although he did so by doing something very naughty.