Cone of Shame

Ok, the hero in Pixar's new movie, Up, is a golden retriever. But in one of its scenes, the villain, a doberman (keep up the stereotypes!)is forced to wear what is dubbed by the pack as the "cone of shame." Yes, we are talking about the lightweight, safe, effective way to keep dogs from irritating sutures, wounds and itchy spots. At least that's what the sticker claims.

At the vet, I was also offered a "more compassionate" doughnut-shaped pillow, but I didn't buy it, thinking that my Kafka would rip it to shreds in less than two minutes. So we left the vet with the plastic cone, promptly lost on the freeway when I absent-mindedly placed it on the truck bed. We took a detour into a big-box store for pets. A very sweet sales associate offered help in putting it on, but I could not finish this sentence "Um, it my be better if you don't..." before Kafka was jumping and scratching the heck out of the young man. He had the cone in his hand and approached him suddenly from the front, perhaps thinking Kafka was a golden retriever dressed in grey. I do not know how he instinctively rejected the cone idea, and no, I was not passing on any nervousness.

So we left with the new cone, which was a transluscent baby blue in color, and had these tiny black plastic snaps. At home, he hid under the table, then buckled and thrashed violently whenever he saw us with it. When I say violently I mean that even the cable man, who was there installing our new service, had trouble holding him down. He also screamed and cried like we were going to sell him for body parts. But the cable man lifted him off the ground while we struggled with the little black snaps and this proved to be the winning combination. Only that panic caused Kafka to poop all over the kind cable guy.