MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – A South Florida woman is devastated after her dog went blind in one eye following a visit to a Miami Gardens grooming salon last month, but the business owner claims the injury was caused by the dog’s sibling.
Ashley Murray took her two dogs, Rambo and Buddy, to Doggies Gone Wild on Jan. 7 for grooming.
When she returned to pick them up, she was told that 3-year-old Rambo had attacked his younger brother.
“They brought Buddy back out and put him on the table and showed us his eye and I started crying because, sorry, his eye was really bad, it was red and bulging out, it was like a growth on his eye and he could barely open it,” Murray said.
Murray said she rushed Buddy to an emergency vet that night, where doctors diagnosed him with a punctured cornea, possibly caused by a dog bite.
Two days later, her personal veterinarian found that Buddy’s right eye was shrinking due to episcleritis. A veterinary eye specialist later confirmed blindness due to corneal perforation.
Murray remains skeptical of the groomer’s explanation.
“Rambo couldn’t have done this, it just doesn’t sound believable,” she said.
She questioned the lack of video evidence showing the apparent attack.
“So there’s no footage of the incident, so I said well then how do you know what really happened then because now this is all here say, like I have no choice but to believe you that Rambo attacked Buddy and I just don’t believe that, so now I think this is all a lie and a cover-up,” Murray said.
Doggies Gone Wild manager Sandra Martinez denied the possibility that a groomer accidentally injured Buddy.
“Is there any possibility that maybe a groomer with scissors or razor? No, no, no, no. Not possible the eye could have been nicked? We would have seen the blood when it happened,” Martinez said.
The business owner, Marco Ramirez, showed surveillance footage to Murray and later to Local 10 News.
The video footage confirmed Buddy was not injured during grooming but did not capture what happened in the holding area where the dogs waited to be picked up.
“They came and they wanted to see the footage, we showed them the footage, but they were not happy enough because there was not footage inside the room,” Ramirez said.
Ramirez also shared a photo showing Buddy’s face after grooming with no visible eye injury.
Veterinarians have advised Murray that Buddy’s injured eye will likely degenerate and may need to be removed.
“He said he has blindness in his eye. He said that he’s only 2 years old so he can still live a healthy life um you know just with one eye,” Murray said. “But it’s probably, you know he doesn’t want to tell us what to do but if it was him in the situation, he would maybe remove the eye so that he could be comfortable and not in pain.”
After the interview, Ramirez said he offered to review Murray’s vet bills to submit an insurance claim, but she has since ceased communication and filed a lawsuit in small claims court.
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