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: