A beloved beagle struck by a train managed to limp his way back home with a broken leg after going missing for 10 days.
Two-year-old Ronnie was so spooked by fireworks that he ran out from his owner’s garden in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
Owner Jo Wackwett was working from home at the time but her partner Grant noticed that the dog had leapt over the garden gate.
Air hostess Jo feared the worst when a train driver reported hitting a dog matching his description.
‘Ronnie isn’t usually scared of fireworks but there was a particularly loud bang and my partner, Grant, saw him scrambling over our gate, which was quite an effort as it’s fairly high,’ she said.
‘As soon as I found out he’d escaped I put posts on social media and was contacted by a train driver who saw Ronnie on the tracks and believes his train hit him as it rounded a bend.
‘It happened close to our local station, High Brooms, and when I sent him a photo of Ronnie, he was positive it was the dog he’d seen.
‘The train driver was devastated, but I came off the phone with some closure about what had happened.
‘As there were no further sightings of Ronnie, we assumed the worst and told our daughter he wasn’t ever coming home.
‘We were all absolutely heartbroken and completely grieving for Ronnie.’
But after 10 days, a friend phoned Jo to tell her the good news – they spotted a battered Ronnie in a local park and followed him home to Jo’s house.
Realising it was the missing dog, the person popped a note in Jo’s letterbox saying they’d rushed Ronnie to the vet.
Reunited, Jo said: ‘I sat on the floor and he put his head on my shoulder for a proper cuddle and he left it there for a couple of minutes.
‘He was thin, covered in nasty cuts and his leg was badly broken, but he was alive and that was all that mattered.’
Ronnie was treated for a broken leg at Anderson Abercromby, a veterinary practice in Warnham.
Surgeon Federico Piccinno said: ‘Ronnie was extremely thin when he was admitted to the practice, and he wasn’t able to use his left hind leg or put weight on it.
‘He also had several wounds on his body which looked like friction burns. X-rays were taken which showed that the leg was broken in several places.’
Federico said Ronnie’s injuries were caused by a low- to medium-energy impact, making it likely the poor pup suffered ‘a glancing blow from a train’.
‘He could also have been injured if he jumped away from the train at the last minute and fell,’ he said.
‘His other wounds were very similar to burns or abrasions, which may have been caused by debris flying up from train tracks.’
Federico was worried about operating on Ronnie, given that his injury was a few days old and his bones were healing in a way that would make surgery tricky.
Rather than the go-to metal plate, the surgeon instead used an external fixator, a metal frame, to realign Ronnie’s bones.
‘This was kept in position for around 12 weeks,’ Federico said, ‘Ronnie coped very well with it.
‘He was able to recover at home, but only allowed restricted exercise on the lead so he couldn’t run around too much as he’s quite an energetic dog.’
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