21/10/2026
Here's more of Chloe's story.... Facebook won't let me post all the footage I have of her. I will try to pop it onto Patreon tomorrow.
The first photo is from when she came in. I think I smelled her before I saw her, the infection was so strong. This left ear is the one that looks the worst. I can only assume she has been picked up by a large dog who has thrown her around like a ball. She has puncture wounds all over the place, every time I looked at a different part of her I found another one. And they were all infected and sore. The left ear here shows where she developed an abscess which eventually will have burst and then dried over the wound. There were also maggots and fly eggs in the mix too. She also has puncture wounds on her stomach, her back, her back left leg and also has a significant wound behind her right ear as well.
It took hours to work with her that first night. Pain relief, antibiotics, fluids and a lot of work with tweezers, cotton buds and syringes to flush out the holes. By the end of the night I couldn't quite believe that she was alive; she shouldn't have been with all the wounds and infection that she had. It was late at night and the pain relief was working so I decided to make her as comfortable as I could for the night and contact our vet to end her suffering the morning after........ until I offered her some water to drink. I couldn't believe how much she drank....... she really wanted it. She was fighting. I put her into a pod and on a heat pad and she got up straight away and found the biscuits I had put in for her. She started to eat. I put some wet food in and she immediately moved to that and started digging in. I was totally in awe of her.....this girl was amazing.
She has barely stopped eating since! She loves her wet food and it's really great to see her eating so well. She still has a long way to go. Our vet has gassed her down and we've had a good look at her wounds. Thankfully they all have 'a bottom' and hopefully the infection won't track too much around her body. It does seem to be working its way out of all the holes. She also had a back right foot that was four times the size it should have been but again this is improving daily and looks far more like a foot now.
Through all this she has let me treat her with amazing patience, I swear they understand far more than we give them credit for. She had a medicated paddle bath to help her foot and as she lay in the towel in my arms afterwards she fell asleep....there is NO greater feeling than that trust.
I'll keep you updated with her progress. She does also have internal parasties that I've started treating, she has a hill to climb there's no doubt about it, but she's a strong girl so I will help her all I can.
If you can please consider donating to our fundraiser for our new shed so we can continue to help hedgehogs like Chloe who need someone to fight alongside them. https://gofund.me/87c2d20d3
