A dog’s owners have appealed for help to find a car that failed to stop after hitting their puppy leaving him with “horrific” injuries in Aberdeenshire.
April Neish and her partner Paul Montgomery’s seven-month-old black Labrador Baxter is now in a critical condition at a local vet practice in Torphins.
Mr Montgomery had been visiting Miss Neish’s parents at their house on the main road in Strachan on Friday and described how Baxter had been playing near him just moments before disaster struck.
He said: “I had been working on something in the garage with April’s dad and Baxter had been right next to us playing with a bit of straw.
“He must have run on to the road, because the next thing I knew there was a huge bang and Baxter was howling.
“I could hear the car engine revving and then it disappeared.
“The road was actually closed on Friday night, so I’m not sure how they got through. I didn’t see it.”
Miss Neish’s parent’s house is near to Strachan Hall on the B976 Strachan to Aboyne road and is “set back” from the main road.
Mr Montgomery rushed to the road to find Baxter “in a terrible state”, he said: “He was trying to stand up, but his front paw was practically hanging off – I actually thought he had broken his back.”
Baxter was taken to the vets in Torphins where he has remained over the weekend in order to stabilise his condition.
Last night a worried Miss Neish explained that a specialist vet would be required to operate on Baxter, adding: “They need to get him stabilised before they can take X-rays – the trauma and swelling to his legs needs to come down before they can even assess what he has done.”
Appealing for the driver of the car to come forward, Mr Montgomery said: “Judging by the noise I heard, I’d imagine the car has got some damage. I wonder if they know that it is an offence to drive off after hitting a dog. We have told the police and they asked us to put out an appeal for help.”
The Road Traffic Act 1988 says it is the duty of a driver to stop and report an accident if ‘damage is caused’ to an animal.