Puppy found with burn down back

By Sarah Viren
As published in the Daily News,  
June 21, 2005

Texas City Brownie is an exceptionally quiet puppy. But if anything touches the red and pink wound running the ridge of her back she doesn’t yelp, she screams.

Just more than 3 months old, Brownie was picked up by the Galveston County Heath District on Friday, flaps of skin and fur hanging like curtains at her side.

Volunteers with Friends of the Galveston County Animal Shelter, where she was taken, say they believe someone burned the puppy with acid or fire. And they want to find the culprit. “I asked if (the veterinarian) thought it was accidental and he said ‘no,’” Lynne Mattingly, a shelter volunteer, wrote in a recent e-mail plea for help. “In other words, some monster poured acid or boiling liquid on her, or poured some flammable fluid on the poor dog’s back and set her afire.” D.G. Sigler, the veterinarian who treated Brownie, said he could not say for sure that the burns were intentional. Right now, Brownie is recovering at Laurine Murtagh’s house in Texas City, which has sheltered probably hundreds of animals during the years. Murtagh, 73, currently boards a 5-year-old mutt with only three legs, a Japanese Chin blind in one eye and a beagle mix with an amputated tail, along with many others.

She visits the shelter every Wednesday and often offers her modest ranch-style house as a temporary shelter for lost or abused dogs and cats.

But Brownie is one of the worst cases she’s seen. “I’ve never seen this in the real before,” she said. “You see it on the movies, you see it in pictures.”

On Monday the 18-pound puppy was crouched meekly in a small cage in her hallway. She prefers that safe space to an open room, Murtagh says.

After an overnight visit at the Texas City Animal Hospital this weekend, however, Brownie is starting to heal. The veterinarian assistants cut away the tattered skin and fur; they washed her wound.

Murtagh has bathed Brownie every day since, giving her pain medication and massaging vitamin E into the close to 12-inch burn, which stretches like a paint stain from the base of Brownie’s neck to her tail.

“She’s licked off most of the vitamin E, but the vet says that’s good,” Murtagh said, watching Brownie amble on shaky puppy legs across her tiled living room. She calls the mixed-breed her “burn patient,” and says she hopes to find her a good home.

But more urgently, Murtagh and other volunteers with the Friends of the Galveston County Animal Shelter want answers about what happened to Brownie. “How could anyone look at that little face and do that to her?” Mattingly asked during a visit to check up on Brownie. The dog quietly nestled up against her skirt. When Mattingly reached down to pet her, she hesitated briefly. She had to remember to avoid Brownie’s tender back.

For more information about adopting Brownie, call Laurine Murtagh at (409) 945-9782. Anyone with information about Brownie’s injuries can call the Friends of the Galveston County Animal Shelter at (409) 925-6744 or e-mail michelle114@ev1.net or visit on the Web at www.gcas.petfinder.com

Read an update on this story

For More Information Contact:
Brian Rutherford
Public Health Planner
Galveston County Health District
(409) 938-2275
brutherford@gchd.org