Close Call And A Mystery

I had a terrible scare the other day with the dogs. Both of them got out of the house and went tearing down the road; across neighbors lawns and up and down the sidewalk! Nicki (looking like a black greyhound) apparently had no concept of cars killing her and luckily Justin was brave enough (or crazy enough) to jump out into traffic and stop all the cars!
Sara, Justin and I went frantically running after them, calling them, yelling at them, doing everything we could think of to get them to at least stop. Luckily all the cars stopped where they were and watched the scene unfold. There was a line of traffic stopped in both directions and I barely had time to acknowledge that in my desperate attempt to grab Nicki's collar as she went zooming by me. I failed to catch her and I swear she was having the time of her life! Neither of them seemed to remember a single command they've been taught.

After a few terrifying minutes (that seemed like slow motion hours) Bell decided she had to take a dump and she decided to do it on my neighbors lawn. (the guy that is REALLY finicky about his lawn being perfect too!) I managed to grab her collar and prevent her from running anymore. Nicki, being the pack animal that she is just had to swing back to find out why she was running by herself. Justin managed to snag Nicki when she came to check on Bell.

That was one terrifying few minutes! Once we had both dogs in tow I waved to all the people in the cars and thanked them as loudly as I could. Some of them waved back at me and most of them had smiles on their faces. Perhaps they've had the same thing happen. Perhaps they just enjoyed the show. I don't know. But I was deeply grateful to all of them for stopping no matter what their reasons may have been.

A little while later I made a trip to Petco and purchased two stout "runs" made of covered wire with sturdy clips on them. I had both dogs outside with me while I weeded my garden. They were safe and I was happy to have them outside and enjoying the sunshine. We were outside for a little over an hour and when I finished weeding I figured it was time to untangle them and take them inside with me. That's when I found a mass of small, blood red, spots all over Bell's belly. Nicki was the same. I knew they must be bites from something but I've never seen bite marks like that before.
I took them both inside and washed their stomachs with a shampoo product I had just gotten from the Vet for the slight rash they both have on the belly. They weren't bothered by the bites so I forgot all about it for a few hours.
Later when I looked at Bell's belly again I found the spots had flattened and spread out. The same was happening to Nicki's bite marks.

Not knowing what they were from I had taken pictures of both dogs stomachs earlier. I now took more pictures to show the difference in the bites after a few hours. Within a couple of days the bite marks were completely gone. I still don't know what they were from but I'm worried about putting them outside if it's going to happen again.
For any of you that may have seen this before these are the pictures I took. The first picture is immediately after being bitten. The second picture is the bites a few hours later. Have you seen this before?






Incidentally, both my girls have a green "X" on their belly. Nobody knows what it's from but my guess is that it's from when they were spayed. They were both very young when they were spayed as is customary in shelters. I think someone marked them for the spay procedure. X marks the spot to cut. My Vet laughed when I said that but said it could be true. We'll never know for sure but it's permanent.