Did he use Krazy Glue?

No Rufus news since our last update, except to note that the bandages our vet applied after Ru’s surgery on Tuesday are still holding up! This is a great relief to me, as a big source of my consternation and anxiety during this episode has been the need to constantly reapply bandages and figure out how to keep both of Ru’s wounds covered and protected.

Last night, Nancy, one of the people from Greyhound Friends NJ who helped us adopt Rufus, stopped by to drop off a cage-type muzzle for Rufus, and also to see how he’s doing. She brought Cali, her grey-girl, along. Ru was happy to make Cali’s acquaintance, but he spent most of his time leaning against Nancy and getting rubs & scratches. And a couple of times, he simply wedged himself between Nancy and her old girl, so he could get himself a little extra love.

Today, he’s pretty much just zonked out on his bed in my home office while I do research for my July/August issue. I let him walk down the stairs on his own, because he keeps from using that rear paw when he does that, but I still carry him up the stairs like Cole Porter’s manservant.

Flipped out

I know all these Rufus recovery posts can be pretty exhausting. Here’s a little reminder of who we’re talking about, mere hours after yesterday’s surgery:

Don’t Crate Me In

Ready for another Rufus update? I thought so!

Our boy went to the animal hospital for surgery today, and all went wonderfully! The vet said that he managed to stitch up the entire rear wound, and about 80% of the front wound. If the sutures hold up (read: if we keep Ru from noshing on them or tearing them with too much activity) then he may be able to get by without a third operation!

So, sentimentality and dignity and such aside, I put his BiteNot collar — thanks, JB Pets! — on him when I got him home. Uncomfortable though it is (well, “though it looks“), I’m willing to take that over panicking every time I leave the room that he’s going to lick his wounds and tear his stitches. And, following Greyhound Jane’s advice, I’ll also put his nylon muzzle on him along with a little duct tape when I have to go out for lunch or anything. Thanks, Jane!

Meanwhile, the owners of the attacking dog just sent a letter claiming, contra the police report, that Rufus was being walked in their yard and that the Akita “proceeded to defend their property.” Which is to say, they’re trying to get out of paying the bills, although they are “willing to share some of the responsibility for the bills you incur once all necessary treatments for the incident have been completed.” Emphasis theirs.

Sigh. I should note that neither owner was home to witness this attack, and it occurred 3 weeks after their Akita came out of the yard and attacked another dog.

So, I’ll get my lawyer on that. As is, I haven’t even sent ’em the bills from CVS, RiteAid, Stop & Shop, and Wayne Pharmacy (two paws up! if only they had a website to plug) for all the bandages, gauze pads and other supplies that we’ve had to use to keep Ru’s wounds protected.

I told the vet about this claim of theirs, and he said, “He was in their yard, ON HIS LEASH?” He also reiterated his claim that he’d never seen muscle torn out of a dog’s leg like that, and still doesn’t get how my boy was able to walk on it.

Oh, and he thinks his latest bandage-job is going to last three days! Bwah-ha-ha!

I told him his last one didn’t reach the six-hour mark; he slit his eyes and said, “Well, if your dog’s leg was just built upside-down, this bandage would work fine!”

What It Is: 6/1/09

What I’m reading: The first three installments of Chris Ware’s “Rusty Brown” book, and some of Plutarch’s life of Alcibiades.

What I’m listening to: Quadrophenia.

What I’m watching: Back-to-back-to-back episodes of Reno 911!, The Wrestler, and, once again, the most entertaining movie ever: Kung Fu Hustle.

What I’m drinking: Plymouth & Q Tonic.

What Rufus is up to: Still recovering from his wounds. He’s scheduled for surgery on Tuesday morning to stitch up more of the damage. I feel a little guilty about my sense of relief that someone else will be taking care of him for a few hours. Outside of an hour or so this weekend when I went out to a surgical supplies store to look for better bandaging & protection materials for him, I’ve pretty much been joined at the hip with Rufus since I got home from Atlanta 10 days ago. As penance for this, I’ll have to deal with him having a new set of stitches and a reduced allowance of physical activity, just when he’s got a ton of energy back and has finally returned to doing his little mealtime pirouette-dance.

Where I’m going: Nowhere. See above.

What I’m happy about: That the vet was so excited about Ru’s current stage of recovery at last Friday’s followup. Also, my pals Ian & Jess came to visit this weekend. We chilled out, ate some of my wife’s fine cooking, watched the aforementioned most entertaining movie ever (two new converts: yay!), and just shot the breeze. They were quite happy not to go out and do stuff, given that they drove 8 hours to get here on Friday and had another 8-hour haul Sunday to get back to VA. I was also pretty happy to get the June issue wrapped up by deadline.

What I’m sad about: That I have to jump right into the July/August issue.

What I’m worried about: That the owners of the dog that attacked Rufus won’t pay his vet bills, forcing me to get my lawyer involved. They haven’t said this yet; they just haven’t responded to my note and the first three bills.

What I’m pondering: Why the use of athletic tape, which is really effective in keep Rufus’ bandages from slipping, also has to cause him so much pain when I change it out.

Down with the King!

In other Rufus-related news, the Animal Control official called me today. The police report was finalized yesterday, so she just received her copy of it and can now act on the case.

I don’t want to go into much depth about our conversation, but she seemed sad about Rufus’ plight and, given the Akita’s other attack a few weeks earlier on Timber (our huskie-neighbor), she made it sound like she’ll help get this menace to public safety out of our neighborhood.

Yesterday I remembered that I actually posted a pic of Ru’s attacker (King) up on Flickr a little while ago. The caption I wrote seems pretty quaint / naive, given what transpired last week, but here’s the pic. You can click through it to go to the flickr page. Be sure to hit the “All Sizes” button to get a close look at this monster:

You can see why I thought he was a husky/shepard mix, right? I’m no dog expert, obviously.

More surgery? Great!

I took Rufus down to the vet this afternoon for a followup. He’d shrugged his way out of his bandages before we got to the stairs here at home, so I decided to just cover his leg with the sweatpant-bandage, since the vet was just going to take everything off him anyway.

He stomped his way out of that once I put him in the car, so I tucked the sweatpant in my pocket and walked him to the office. I was hoping not to have to put it back on him, but I peeked into the lobby and saw a few people inside. I figured they don’t need to get exposed to the goriness of Ru’s leg, so I pulled the loose wrap up his leg and tied a bow at his hip, so it’d stay on.

The staff started cooing when Ru came in: first the receptionist and then, attracted like seagulls, the other assistants and staffers. They have a serious crush on my doggie. Soon, one of them realized that Ru’s wounds were uncovered, except for the ersatz hip-wader he was wearing, and hustled us back into the one of the exam rooms, so they could get him taken care of right away.

The leg really is gruesome. I mean, to say it’s like raw hamburger would be an insult to raw hamburgers everywhere. How on earth he manages not to flinch when we’re changing the sterile gauze on it, I’ll never know.

Then the vet came in, gave him a quick once-over, and pronounced, “This looks great!”

“I’ll take your word for it, doc,” I told him.

“No, really! All this new tissue growth is fantastic. We’ll be able to stitch up some more of it next week, so there’ll be less exposure. Now let me get this drain out of him” — snip, snip, pluck — “and these stitches” — snip, snip, snip — “and we’ll clean out his wounds and rebandage him!”

Note: at no time did I write, “they put a muzzle on him.” The entire time that the vet was probing, taking out the drain tube and clearing out stitches, his assistant, a teen-looking girl (I’m terrible about guessing ages) who’s in love with Rufus, gently held him by the neck.

I thought, “Hey, I know he’s a really calm doggie, but this is stretching it.”

Once the doctor brought the iodine solution out to start cleaning things, he realized that a muzzle might be a good idea, so they set him up. Better late than never.

I told the vet that Ru’s bandages get replaced 2-3 times a day, because his musculature and his range of motion make it almost impossible for them to stay on him. It’s a real challenge because the sterile gauze pads also slide off the wounds, leaving them exposed to the air, germs, etc. I need one more thing to feel like a failure about. Trust me.

“What about the wrap I did last Tuesday morning? How long did that last?”

“Maybe 4 hours,” I told him.

“Really?”

“Yeah, man. By the afternoon, he looked like he had a neon green leg warmer on his ankle.”

He stared at Rufus’ leg. When he was done a-cleanin’g, he began a-wrappin’, putting base tape so high on Ru’s hip that it almost reached the other leg. “Tell me how this holds up,” he said when he was finished.

“I’ll take a picture in 6 hours. You’ll probably cry,” I told him.

But his enthusiasm didn’t flag. Where I saw sub-hamburger, he saw great signs of granular tissue growth and opportunity for stitching. We scheduled a surgery for next Tuesday morning, and we’ll see about our progress from there!

And now, on to the weekend, where Ru will make his triumphant promenade at our farmer’s market, and will otherwise lounge on his beds, rest, and heal.

Let’s just hope that bandage stays up.

Non-update

It was another uneventful night with Rufus. He showed a little more energy yesterday evening, especially when he got a new visitor: the lawyer who’s going to step in if we need him.

This morning, Ru decided to go up the stairs on his own, probably chagrined by the fact that I’ve been carrying him up since yesterday. Since he doesn’t have any stitches to worry about, his bounding up the stairs is more a factor of leg strength and confidence, I think. (I noticed last night that he actually keeps his injured leg up when he walks down the stairs. Smart boy.)

I’m glad that he’s more comfortable up here, because I can get a lot more work done in my upstairs office than I can in the rec room. In fact, I have so many pages ready — and he and I are going so stir crazy — that we’re going to make the trek out to my workplace this morning, so I can get our June issue (mostly) out the door, clear up last-minute changes with my production manager, and let co-workers come by and give Rufus a hug/pet/scratch of encouragement.

I’ll also do my best to make sure the bandages and sterile pads are completely covering up his wounds. I took everything off and rebandaged him this morning, and realized that some people may get sick, run screaming, or faint dead away at the sight of his wounds.

We’re also going to have to find a medical supply store that will sell us a TON of self-adhesive wrap, as we’ve depleted the stocks of our local drug stores and supermarkets. As ever: oy.

InterRude

No big changes today. I carried Rufus upstairs last night, so we could all sleep in the master bedroom, rather than downstairs in the rec room / library. This morning, he managed to amble down the stairs on his own, which was great. Been working at home today, making sure he doesn’t try to nibble on his wound, watching him sleep, and of course taking a funny picture of him:

W-R-U-F: all Rufus, all the time

[UPDATE IN A NUTSHELL: we’re gonna keep his leg wrapped, keep him on reduced activity, and continue putting clean gauze pads over the two wounds. On Friday, we’ll reassess removing the drain.]

Well, yesterday’s horrible post notwithstanding (and I was a goddamn wreck after coming home to that), Rufus may actually be doing alright. I took him down to the vet (there are 4 vets at this animal hospital, so in future I’m going to use “vets’ place” to refer to the animal hospital/office) this morning to see about getting his drain tube removed. I warned toda’ys vet about what happened last night, when Ru chomped and licked through his bandages and busted up many of his sutures.

He took the bandages off and told me, “Don’t worry. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“It looks like a horror movie,” I replied, checking out the two gaping wounds in his leg (pictures available, but I doubt you want to see them).

“Exactly. And it’s not that bad. We didn’t get set back too far by this.”

He may have been blowing smoke, but he told me that one reason Rufus was so intent on getting to his wounds is that they were just stitched up too tight, and the pain/irritation was just too much for him. I thought that was nicer than saying, “Well, you hope this doesn’t happen, but now that it has. . .”

Now that it has happened, and both wounds are open with a rubber tube intersecting them, the course of treatment is going to be lots of sterile gauze pads, self-adhesive “gentle tape” and frequent cleaning!

Today’s vet was less sanguine than the one we had on Saturday. He was open-ended about the timeframe for the wounds to heal — which is natural, given that they’ve pulled back open now and don’t look as good as they did on Saturday — and raised the possibility of using skin grafts, if Ru can’t produce enough tissue through the healing process.

I asked about options to keep him from reaching back and licking at his wounds again, but the options they had on hand were pretty scant: a standard translucent plastic cone (it didn’t fit great, but I took it) and a big blue plastic ring with white flowers that looked like a child’s inner-tube. Foolishly, I neglected to take a picture of Rufus modeling it. They hadn’t heard of the item that one of my Facebook pals just mentioned to me, a BiteNot collar. I’ll ask around about that.

The vet used a gallon of iodine and a ton of gauze to clean both wounds, and then repacked and bandaged the leg. I warned him that the bandages tend to slip down Ru’s leg almost instantly. He said they’d try to anchor it much higher on his hip. I laughed on the inside. The top of his upper wound was exposed within an hour. Sigh.

Today’s vet was the same one I spoke to the night of the attack. I’d called the animal hospital shortly after I got back into my hotel room that evening (I got the call about the attack at 5pm while I was at the conference, and it took me about half an hour to get back to my room). This morning he said, “I’m gonna tell you the same thing I said that night you called: I’m amazed your dog is walking on this leg at all.”

I said, “He really hasn’t been shy about it, except when he’s tried to trot back into the house after a bathroom break. Then he keeps that one in the air, because he’s trying to get speed.

“But if you think that’s surprising, it gets better. Yesterday, I went upstairs to get the lunch that my wife had cooked. I was at the top of the stairs” — it’s a bi-level, with two flights of six steps and a landing between — “when I looked back and saw Rufus bounding up the bottom flight.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Didn’t show any sign of pain or hesitation. I wasn’t happy about it, but I was amazed. He didn’t want to go back down either. Kept trying to get around me so he could go up the second flight and join my wife in the kitchen. I had to lead him out the front door, then around the back of the house, so he could go back in his crate on the bottom floor.”

“With that leg?”

Then I told him how, on our way down there this morning, Ru decided he needed to jump into the back of my Element, rather than letting me lift  him up and put him inside. I spun around shocked when he jumped and slammed into him, but I managed to keep him from falling too hard on our driveway. “He is a remarkable dog,” the vet said.

In the lobby of the office, as we waited for the bill, Ru encountered a violently friendly yellow lab, whose owner had to push him to the ground to get him to stop trying to reach us. Ru, meanwhile, had found a woman who was a soft touch at the other side of the lobby and was leaning against her in hopes of garnering a treat or two, completely oblivious to the other dog. He’s such a whore.

After we left the vets’ office, I took him over to our local pet store, so the owner (Chuck) could festoon some love on the boy. Amy & I had stopped in on Sunday to pick up some food and a new toy for Ru. Chuck saw us and immediately said, “I heard what happened to Rufus! How is he?”

It struck both me and Amy as funny, how we’ve become part of a community like this, mainly by virtue of having a beautiful and friendly dog. I don’t think I’ve ever really had that vibe before. So I thought Chuck  would like to see our boy today and know that he’s not too debilitated.

We talked about various e-collars to keep Ru from licking at his wound. He didn’t have much of a selection — “We never use those, really, and I never hear good things about ’em from people.” — but we did order a nylon & cloth muzzle for Ru, in case we need to keep him from opening his mouth. (And one of my greyhound pals just posted a comment that a muzzle is actually a good tool for when we have to leave him unattended for a little while.)

Ru decided to make friends with the two other families that were in the store, wagging his tail, leaning against adults, and licking kids’ faces, before begging for treats up at the counter.

Chuck, meanwhile, had convinced me that the “Bitter Apple” spray isn’t as good deterrent to keep a dog from licking something as “Bitter YUCK!” is. So I picked up a bottle of that and took Ru back out to the car.

In keeping with his “what injury?” mode, Ru stopped to take a pee and, rather than squat down as he’s been doing since the attack, he did the standard boy-dog move: he leaned over on one side and tipped up his leg. The problem was, he leaned over on his bad side, and tipped up the rear leg of his good side! I thought, “What dog puts his weight on a leg with two gaping wounds, just to pee on a shrub?” Answer: mine.

Then I struggled to keep him from jumping into the back of the Element again and brought him home. Where he’s been knocked-out asleep for more than 3 hours now.

Thanks for sticking around this long. You deserve a sleepy/smiley picture of Ru from this morning: