Conehead Dog - Or, How Prepared Should We Be?
On Christmas Day, we called Pepper, our outside dog, who'd been running in the fields. She came bouncing home, but I sensed something wasn't right. I made her lie on her back and show me her tummy— and found she had a 3" gash on her belly. She didn't seem to notice it; border collies and heelers are notoriously unphased by pain.
Getting a vet on Christmas Day would be neither easy nore cheap, so we cleaned and bandaged the wound ourselves. We also gave her a shot of penicillin, which we have on hand for the goats.
We put the cone on her to keep her from removing the bandage. Pepper had never been in a cone before, and at first she looked pretty pitiful. It took her a couple of days to learn how to move around without running into everything.
The next morning we called our vet— a mobile vet who makes ranch calls. She came and put in stitches, with Pepper lying on a blanket on the kitchen floor. It's probably less sanitary than a conventional aseptic operating room, but much cheaper— plus. animals seem much more comfortable in their home environment with their owners acting as assistants. It wasn't necessary to put her under, just a bit of sedation and a local anesthetic and she did fine.
In the course of the stitching, we talked about preparedness. Specifically, we wondered whether we'd have been able to stitch her ourselves if we had the supplies. The vet assured us that we'd cleaned the wound well, and that if we had the supplies there's no reason we couldn't apply stitches if we were inclined to.
Her bill came to just over a hundred dollars— much cheaper than an emergency room vet visit, but still a bit painful. Now we're shopping for sutures, staples, and the like. Next time— and we've learned that there will be a next time, and that it will probably be on a holiday— we'll be ready to take care of a wound like this ourselves.
Welcome to the country. We'd never have considered stitching up a dog ourselves when we lived in LA.
Trackbacks
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1/31/2008 2:26 PM
www.AsymptoticLife.com wrote:
We adopted Sam, a Blue Heeler (Australian Cattle Dog), from a pound in Las Vegas about three years ago. The vet guessed his age then at about two years old. Now he's five and a happy, active, teddy bear of a dog.A few months ago, we noticed he couldn't always find food that dropped on the floor, even when we pointed it out to him. We chalked it up to excitement (or stupidity). But Friday night when I gave him his dinner, he tripped over it. Obviously something was wrong.Monday (in a snowstorm) we took ... -
1/31/2008 3:10 PM
www.AsymptoticLife.com wrote:
We adopted Sam, a Blue Heeler (Australian Cattle Dog), from a pound in Las Vegas about three years ago. The vet guessed his age then at about two years old. Now he's five and a happy, active, teddy bear of a dog.A few months ago, we noticed he couldn't always find food that dropped on the floor, even when we pointed it out to him. We chalked it up to excitement (or stupidity). But Friday night when I gave him his dinner, he tripped over it. Obviously something was wrong.Monday (in a snowstorm) we took ... -
5/2/2008 7:51 AM
www.AsymptoticLife.com wrote:
We adopted Sam, a Blue Heeler (Australian Cattle Dog), from a pound in Las Vegas about three years ago. The vet guessed his age then at about two years old. Now he's five and a happy, active, teddy bear of a dog.A few months ago, we noticed he couldn't always find food that dropped on the floor, even when we pointed it out to him. We chalked it up to excitement (or stupidity). But Friday night when I gave him his dinner, he tripped over it. Obviously something was wrong.Monday (in a snowstorm) we took ...
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