Dwight the greyhound runs for his life from fireworks and ends up in ICU

It happened in a flash.

Lenka Perron was in her backyard in suburban Detroit Saturday night with her two dogs as they did their business.

Suddenly, a neighbor nearby shot off fireworks.

It sounded, she told the Detroit Free Press. "like a succession of cannons."

The light from the fireworks illuminated the yard, she said.

Dwight, her 55-pound greyhound rescue, freaked out, "and before I could react, he escaped," Perron described on her Facebook page.

"He somehow in seconds, squeezed his roughly 20" chest between the roughly 6" slats on our gate. It was like watching somebody lift a car who was filled with adrenalin!"

She and her teenage daughter and brother, all barefoot, took off running after Dwight, calling out. But the booms drowned them out.

Three humans, chasing a dog running, her brother said later, at greyhound speed.

"His legs were in every direction in the air to get away," Perron told the Free Press. "He dug his paws so hard into the concrete to accelerate his speed."

They tracked Dwight through the neighborhood by the bloody paw prints on the ground.

They caught up to him when a fence redirected his escape.

"I have never seen an animal in this stage of fear before," Perron told the Free Press.

Dwight had run so hard the pads on his paws were gone.

"All four of his paw pads were torn off from running and he was bleeding heavily," Perron's brother, Peter Brnovich, told WDIV in Detroit.. "I had blood all over myself. My niece did as well. He had urinated and defecated on himself."

And, Perron didn't know until later when x-rays were taken, that one-year-old Dwight also had been hit by a car. Several of his ribs were fractured, Brnovich told WDIV.

"I think if people really knew and saw face-to-face the magnitude of the crisis, I think they would opt to refrain from letting off fireworks at home," Brnovich told the TV station.

His sister's Facebook post about what happened to Dwight, along with pictures of the bloody aftermath, has been shared more than 35,000 times since Saturday.

She prefaced her post by saying she was "going to be very measured in my response right now, although we are all emotional and angry over here."

But her message was very pointed.

"There are local ordinances detailing WHEN and WHERE fireworks can be shot off. This ALLOWS pet owners to properly and safely prepare," she wrote.

"And further, those animal and firework statistics about the impact on animals? Those Facebook posts? They mean something.

"And if they don't, maybe these photos will.

"Police cannot enforce the overwhelming and illegal misuse of fireworks. It's going to come down to us learning to care about how people with PTSD and animals are impacted."

According to the Free Press, fireworks can be shot off on the Fourth of July, and the day before and after in Michigan, which means her neighbors weren't following the law.

Perron told The Kansas City Star in a Facebook message that she wants people to get to know their local fireworks ordinances and heed them to let "pet owners and people with PTSD more properly prepare when they can anticipate those days and times.

"Today, people are doing them over a span of weeks and we are going to have to start calling the police as often as possible until people get the message."

On Sunday she posted a photo of Dwight laying on a table at the vet, hooked up to tubes and his paws wrapped. He managed to wag his tail at her when he saw her before heading into surgery, which will be followed by three days in ICU, she wrote.

"We hope that his spirit hasn't changed at all — that innocent playful spirit," she told the Free Press, but "this is gonna change him."

On Monday she wrote that she hadn't realized that Dwight's flight had gone viral.

Dozens of comments and prayers have been left on her posts, several from people angry about what's happened, many sharing stories about their own dogs traumatized by fireworks.

"People don't care," wrote one woman. "I have asked my neighbor, to let us know when they are going to do fireworks, they said they would, but never (do)!!! They let them off around Christmas, New Year's Eve ... Memorial Day, 4th of July, etc... We never know when !!! My dog gets sacred and my husband is a Marine veteran and doesn't like it when he is not expecting it!!!"

"I lost my dog on NYE several years ago," wrote another woman. "Ran frantically. Unfortunately, I never found him. I'm sorry you and your dog went thru this. I hope he recovers."

"I think we all knew this was a problem, but never in my wildest dreams did I know it was such a crisis for so many pet owners," wrote Perron.

"I think I am most moved by all the private messages from people who had already purchased their fireworks, and after reading Dwight's story and discussing it with their families, they will either not be lighting them off or lighting them off at the legal times and locations.