Our dog, Duke, escaped from our yard the other day, got into a dog fight, and was returned to us by our neighbor. He looked fine when he got home, but it turned out that he wasn’t. In the evening, he brushed against the back door and howled like a stabbed wolf … which was pretty much what he was.

It turned out that he had been bitten. The bite was deep and painful. I don’t think he noticed it until he rubbed against the door, but once he did, he wouldn’t leave the bite alone. In minutes, he was standing in the kitchen in a puddle of blood. When I tried to clean the wound, he tried to bite off my hand.

We got Duke two months ago from the local shelter. Since the day he joined our family, he has been sweet and playful. So it worried us when he snarled, bared his teeth, and tried to bite us when we went anywhere near his injury.

The bite was discovered on Saturday night so we didn’t get him to a vet until Monday, since our vet was closed. Two visits and more than $900 later, we had a bag of pills and a sedated dog. That’s all $900 gets you these days at our vet. But I will save that rant for another day.

Getting the pills into Duke was an adventure. I’d stuff them in cheese or sausage hunks and he’d eat them. Hours later, I’d find the pills all over the house. He ate the meat or cheese, secreted the pills in his cheek, and spit them out when nobody was looking. So, I’d try again, with more meat or cheese, and stand over him until I was sure the pills had been swallowed.

As I said, trying to clean the wound was out of the question, unless we wanted to lose fingers or a limb. So we ignored the blood that had dripped down his side and dried on his fur. He was obsessed with the cut, however, so he opened it up every time a scab formed, either by licking it or scratching it with his leg. He was in a lot of pain for several days, until the antibiotics started working, so we had to be very careful when we tried to make him stop opening the scab.

Our first strategy was to put one of those lampshade collars on his head. That kept him from licking the wound, but he could still reach it with his leg. It also made him think that since he couldn’t move his head, he couldn’t move anything. So he would stand stock still like a statue. This was very inconvenient for us because he’s a wide dog and he always managed to be blocking the doorway we wanted to go through.

Since his imagined paralysis became a hindrance to us, we took off the lampshade and put a T-shirt on him, knotting it on the top so he couldn’t lick the bite. Of course, he could still scratch it with his leg, and he did, which left us with a dog walking around in a bloody T-shirt. I don’t know how we initially got the shirt on him, but there was no chance he was going to let us take it off and put on a clean one. The snarling and the snapping of his giant teeth terrified us.

We began to wonder if we had adopted the Devil’s dog. I hoped not, because I wouldn’t have the guts to return him to the shelter. People who work at shelters have a gift for making you feel like bottom feeders if you return your adopted pet, even if the pet is possessed by demons. Fortunately, he went back to being a sweet dog once he felt better.

But, before then, when he was in agonizing pain, he decided he was dying. From reading about the phenomenon and witnessing it first-hand with our last dog, we knew that when dogs are dying, they separate themselves from their family, find a private place to lie down, and wait to die.

Ever since we had gotten him, we would let Duke into our fenced yard and whistle for him to come in. He always responded immediately and raced to the door. That was until he got bitten. After that, he would go out, find a dark corner of the yard, lie down, and wait. No amount of whistling could get him to come in. Of course this always occurred after dark, usually after midnight, so we couldn’t see him, and we couldn’t yell his name for fear of waking the neighbors. Usually it was up to me to walk around the yard with my iPhone flashlight, looking for him. When I finally found him, I’d hiss at him, “You’re not dying. Get the hell inside.” Then I’d grab his collar and drag him into the house.

Things have calmed down now that the pills are working. He’s still bleeding all over the floor and spitting pills in corners, but he’s playful and happy.

You can’t have everything.