Tag: greyhound

. . . if not earlier.

We’d been taking walks solo this weekend but, thinking Rufus was pretty settled in his crate after his dinner, we took a 40-minute walk together this evening. He hadn’t tried to lick at his wounds since I’d sprayed the bandages with some bitter apple solution, and I thought he was ready to go to sleep when we left.

We came home to find that he’d chewed/licked through his bandages, tore up a bunch of his sutures, and has two gaping wounds in his leg again. We broke out the hydrogen peroxide, cleaned the perimeters of his wounds, and bandaged them (with sterile gauze covers first).

I should’ve tried to put his sweatpant-leg cover on before we left on that walk, but he was already in his crate and that’s the one place where I’m afraid that he’ll panic if I touch his leg wrong, and try to bite me.

I can’t tell you how angry I am at myself right now. I feel like one of us has to keep an eye on him every minute of this process. Also, the knuckles of my left hand are sore because I punched the ceiling out of rage/frustration.

Sorry to be such a downer. We’ll be at the vet’s tomorrow morning, and I’m hoping not to get browbeaten too much. Maybe she’ll have some advice on how to keep the bandages in place (they continually slide down) and how to stop him from chewing through his wounds.

Just a quiet day of trying to keep Ru from licking his wounds, ripping his sutures, or otherwise stunting his recovery.

Here’s our boy as the Bizarro version of Ace the Bat-Hound:

And a sign that he’s feeling a little better: the new yoga position of Wounded Cockroach!

Thanks for sticking around. I hope you have a good Memorial Day. I’ll likely spend mine reading and keeping an eye on Rufus, while Amy has fun with our grill (no rain, dammit!).

Just back from the vet! At least half the staff of the office came in to see Rufus, since he’d made such an impression on everyone last week. He held up well for this exam, although they decided to pre-emptively put a stylish muzzle on him. I have a picture of this, which I’ll post soon. He looked like the Bizarro Ace the Bat-Hound.

Of Ru’s two main wounds, the front one is healing up just fine, but the rear one isn’t suturing up so well, so he may need another surgery in a few weeks. We’ll be going back Tuesday morning to have the drain (a long rubber tube) removed from his leg, and next weekend we’ll have a better idea of how that rear wound is doing.

The vet re-wrapped his leg and made the final cover out of a neon green bandage that has some bitter-taste chemical in it (to keep him from licking it). She told me that Rufus reacts kinda badly whenever he has a new wrap; the minute she was done and he was allowed to start walking, he yelped and kept twisting in circles, trying to get at the new bandage.

The thing is, he did the same thing last night when I put a wrap at the top of his bandage, to cover the part that had slipped down since Wednesday. I thought I’d wrapped him too tightly, but the vet explained that he just needs a little while to adjust.

Since this was my first time talking to the vet since Ru was brought to them on Tuesday, I asked about his long-term prospects of recovery. I had no idea how long it’ll take him to get back to his old self, as far as going on hikes, or even just walking around the block for a mile. In fact, I didn’t know if the nature of his injuries meant he would never do that stuff again. That’d be awful, since he really enjoys our meanders in the neighborhood. (I’m convinced that he’ll have no lasting ‘mental’ trauma from the attack.)

The vet said that if the rear wound does require an extra surgery, we could be looking at total recovery period of as long as . . . six weeks or so. Total. If he does better (and if there’s no complication due to infection, which is my big fear), he could be back up to snuff in about four weeks.

So, as gory and grotesque as his injuries are, we have a lot of hope that he’ll be back to normal by mid-summer. Just in time for those mid-90’s days that we hate going out in!

Amy posted a set of her (much better) photos of Rufus recovering in his crate.

We’re off to the vet in a couple of hours, to find out our next step in his recovery/rehab. Here’s hoping they let him out of his crate.

No real news over the rest of the day. He rests in his crate, tries to lick his wounds, gets talked down, and goes out to pee every so often. We go to the vet tomorrow to see if it’s okay for him to start using the stairs.

Here’s our boy in late afternoon:

Here’s a view of him with his leg-bandage all covered up by a sweatpant-leg:

I have a few photos that our dog-walker took on the way to the animal hospital. They show the injury in its gruesomeness. If you’re interested in seeing them, let me know and I’ll send you a link, but they’re not something I’d post here for public (and accidental) viewing.

I’ve got a whole set of these.

He truly is . . . the son of dog:

We brought Rufus back to the dog park on Saturday! I was hoping he’d be more at ease with the other breeds. He wasn’t. He still prefers to stand with us or walk over to other people and get affection. The only dogs he showed any sustained interest (more than 3 seconds) in was a Great Dane and . . . Mini-Me!

Oh, well. Enjoy the pix! (Here’s last week’s visit.)

Besides being Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14th is also the birthday of my brother & my dog. I didn’t call Boaz for a variety of reasons (shabbat, mainly), but we did take Rufus out to a dog park in Ridgewood, NJ for an impromptu birthday party.

Amy & I both posted flickr sets w/wacky commentary, so enjoy hers and mine!

(This is not Rufus, but Oliver, a gorgeously ugly dog we met at the park. Photo courtesy of my wife.)