Cone Saga Part II

We left him alone for two hours with the cone on. When I returned, I found it odd that he was still sitting on the same spot, and odder still that he did not greet me at the door. Today I was to discover a new form of resistance: the hunger strike.

I went back out to do some errands. An hour later, he had not moved, nor had he decided to step into the backyard. Most alarming, he had not had a drop to drink. I made him go into the yard, and gave him some water out of my cupped hand, but I could not make him go near his water bucket. Contact between the cone and the water bucket seemed to freak him out. Same thing with his food bowl. In desperation, I made him sit in the backyard, hoping that a passing squirrel might make him forget this sorry episode. An hour later, I went out to look for him and couldn't find him. I eventually saw him, hiding under some bushes. It was then that I couldn't take it anymore and took off the cone.

The first thing he did after that was lick his sutures, so I put his plastic muzzle on. He persisted, rubbing them with the plastic. Even though I had been told was time to let them air out, I ended up bandaging his paw to avoid further irritation. This went on for the better part of the evening, with me taking off the muzzle every once in a while so he could eat or drink (think of the schnauzer beard!), and him going for his new obsession as soon as he could take off the bandage.

We didn't sleep very well that night, and I vowed to replace the cone the next morning. The prospect didn't look good, so imagining there would have been others in my situation, I checked some sites on the internet and sent for a "no-cone collar" sold by Disabled Pets. However, I still had to find a way to keep him away from his paw for the days it would take the package to arrive. I also needed to be prepared for the possibility that the new collar might not work.

On the second day, I donned gloves and a long-sleeved hoodie to be able to hold him down, putting my full body weight to work while Sarah, having figured out the right diameter, snapped it together. We suceeded on the second try. We left him alone for the better part of the morning, with the same results: total depression. No drinking or eating. In fact, he did not move from his bed. By late afternoon I was worried once more. This time, he would not even drink or eat out of my hand. So took off the cone once more. He ran to his water bucket, and could have drunk a gallon had I not stopped him periodically.

The rest of the day passed in a similar fashion, but instead of a bandage, I decided to place a thick old sock over the paw to give his sutures more of a chance to breathe. This was helpful as he did not lick them directly, and I was able to leave him without a muzzle. The sock generated a lot of sympathy during our afternoon walk near the house! The hardest part of the day was near his bed time, when his nightly chew-myself-to-sleep ritual was replaced by the new lick-myself-to-sleep obsession. So I gave him a new nylabone (ignored), stuffed toys (ignored), a bully stick (ignored), and a bone (success!) until he fell asleep at his summer solstice time of 9:00 PM.

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.

Foxtail Summer

Despite my best efforts, the day came when Kafka got a foxtail embedded between his toes. I had been warned by everyone of the chain of problems associated with this event, in fact, I had started him on daily checks as soon as he was old enough to go to a park. But foxtail checks were never his favorite activity. As with most grooming tasks, he merely tolerated my scrutiny. Up until May, the barbs had been a healthy size and easy to see, but with summer I started finding a much smaller variety. I figured his toes acted like a sieve, collecting not one or two but up to ten or twelve of the tiny spears. We had a post-park routine where he would not go in the house until I had successfully removed every tick, foxtail, and burr off his body. So I felt confident. That is, until we started preparations to move to a new house, and our routine went down the toilet.

About three days later, Kafka sat down at the entrance of his favorite park. He would not move, so I decided to check and found a tiny red bump between his front toes. We turned around while I watched, and on the way to the car I noticed the slightest limp. I had read that his called for a vet visit, but I was hesitant given the size of the bump. I made him stand in warm water, hoping that the tiny seed would come out on his own (this shows how little I knew!). Eventually I made it to the vet, where they shaved the furnishings on the affected paw. The entire paw was swollen, just beyond the tiny red bump that was the entry point. I had not seen how bad it was. To be precise, I had not checked well enough and felt awful. As Dr. Moll gave him a sedative, I was told to pick him up in the late afternoon, since Kafka was going to need surgery to remove whatever was traveling up his tissue.

Nearly four hundred dollars later, my partner Sarah watched how they carefully bandaged his two-inch incision. They gave her a paper bag with the offending foxtails, and precise instructions as to what was supposed to take place in the following two weeks. No baths or water play. No rough games or jumping. The bandage was to stay put for the next seven days. He was going to take antibiotic three times a day, and something for the pain morning and night. Most importantly, he was supposed to leave the bandage alone! The green wrap went all the way to his knee, and had a purple heart drawn with permanent marker. It was so cute that I posted a picture of it on Facebook. Everybody wished him well, but no one warned us of what would come next.