Rufus Unzipped!

One more vet appointment, one step closer on the Rufus Road To Recovery! I took Ru down to the animal hospital this afternoon to see what they think of his recovery from surgery 10 days ago. I thought the wounds were both healing well, but I’m no vet, so I kept my enthusiasm to myself. I was happy that even the assistants, after one look at his scars and stitches in the lobby (where they all came out to see him), beamed and said, “That looks great!”

The vet, too, was thrilled at Ru’s recovery. The wounds progressed well enough that he removed nearly all the stitches, leaving only 3 or 4 in at the two areas where the skin is still scabbed over and healing. These were near the center of both wounds, where the skin was too tight to stitch the sides together fully. He used a couple of dissolving stitches in those spots, but also left a few regular ones in place to reinforce the area near them.

We made an appointment for next Thursday to remove the rest of them, and the vet’s quite hopeful that it’ll be the last time we need to come around for a while.

He added that we can basically go back to regular activity, which is good, since Ru & I actually took his full 1.1-mile walk earlier in the day (he insisted!). If the weather’s cool on Sunday morning, maybe we’ll try bringing him up to the greyhound hike in Wawayanda.

On top of that, he doesn’t think there’s much damage Rufus can inflict on himself if I finally leave him on his own for an hour. So I may build up the nerve to do just that and let him enjoy the silence.

(Update: On second thought, the vet feels like we oughtta make sure he doesn’t lick at his wound too much, for fear of wearing away some of the scar tissue. So we’re gonna stay attached at the hip for a while more. And he’s way too conked-out after a 1-mile walk this evening for me to believe he’ll be in shape to handle Wawayanda tihs weekend. We’ll put that on hold.)