Digits

This household has not been too lucky when it comes to digits lately. I'm not referring to landing some hot guy/dog's phone number. I'm talking about useful digits - phalanges, snappers, fingers.

Here's our digit drama in chronological order.

Seka's Laser Corn Removal
She had a corn removed from each of her back feet at the end of May and was lame for weeks. WEEKS. For a few days she couldn't walk at all and I had to carry all 68 pounds of her up and down the stairs for potty time and help support her for the act itself. This was NOT fun. But after four weeks of recovery, we've finally turned a corner. She's perked up, and is using all four of her feet most of the time.

For awhile there I thought we had made a huge mistake as the incisions were very deep and pretty scary to look at. There were nights of tears that I thought she might not get better, but she is way better off after making it through the long healing process. Did I mention the incisions had to be left open, uncovered and draining the whole time. Thank goodness I have own a carpet cleaner.

Note to all corn dog owners out there - pads could be the slowest things to heal on a dog. But laser corn removal is a good solution according to all of the experts I've spoken to, including Dr. Couto at OSU.

Roxy's Run in with a Door
Roxy lacks the patience that other greyhounds have. She bounces around and cries when she is bored. She doesn't like to wait, even when mom has her hands full and is the only one around with opposable thumbs that can actually open the door she is dying to go through.

Needless to say, when she gets all out of her head, bad things can happen and this is the second time such an incident has happened with a door. The first time she was trying to chase a hot blue dog out of our hotel room (who could blame a girl). This time, she was just being a pain and attempted to walk through a slit in the door the size of a dime and got her toe caught under it.

Three stitches and two feet of vet wrap later and you would have thought we had amputated her entire leg. Dr. Couto has said that greyhounds adapt very easily to a leg amputation because of the way they are built. Roxy milked those stitches and bandage for three days by using only three legs. It even took me taking her to our vet to have the bandage removed because of her screaming and biting (yes biting). Once the offending bandage was removed - all was right in the world.

Now we are just dealing with the tasty wound that has replaced the stitches. She sports a toddler sock and vet wrap most of the time as she would rather lick her toe into a bloody stump than actually let it heal. Why are gooey, oozy, bloody wounds a tasty traveling treat?

Louie's Leash Lashing of my Ligament
Meet Louie. This is my brother-in-law's eight month old lab puppy. Louie is a love bug, but isn't very confident. While we vacationed in MA for seven days, I did some training with Louie. We played clicker games, took walks, learned some basic commands and had a great time - until we walked past other dogs that is. Louie either really likes other dogs or doesn't really like other dogs - hard to tell when there's a lot of barking and leash pulling from an otherwise very submissive dog.

So, I walked the neighborhood with him, passing by several dogs and he did well with some corrections, marking and treats. I don't know what set him off. It could have been a taunting squirrel for all I know (he didn't like those either), but the leash got wrapped around the ring finger on my left hand and twisted it like a pretzel with a snap on the end. Needless to say, it was black for three days and totally swollen. Don't ask me how it happened? The only answer I have for you is I'm a donkey and things like this tend to happen to me.

Now the swelling has gone down and the color is somewhat normal. It is still painful to touch and Kev and I like to debate if it is broken or not. But really, what do you do for a broken finger? Um, typing blog posts probably isn't great, but I've never been one to follow the rules.

So, that's the summary of our digitally-challenged group around here. Seka is the best patient in the house. She follows doctors orders perfectly. Roxy, is the cry baby. Me? I'm tough (aka hard headed). But ask me again in a week when I have to go to the ER and have my finger reset while holding a stick between my teeth because it's healed all crooked and weird.