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Saturday 25 September 2010

Nursing skills

Django went out for a walk today with his girlfriend Nuka and by all accounts they spent an hour or so bombing around in the woods. I wasn't totally surprised when he came home with a bit of a limp; Pointers are prone to straining their feet because of their arched toes and he is always doing it and bouncing back to normal the next day.  He took himself off to bed and I thought no more of it.

A couple of hours later when he came outside to sit in the sun with me I noticed he was licking his leg a lot, and his hair was pink instead of white, hmm.  On closer inspection it was bloody and he had a nasty cut in the top of his leg, quite deep and the first thing that sprang into my mind was "stitches".   This thought was quickly followed by "it's Saturday"... why do animals always injure themselves at a weekend, as soon as the emergency phone number for the vet kicks in? In fact it's a bonus that this time it's not a bank holiday weekend.

As it happens, I had been recommended and purchased some Vetrap to wrap round my crutch handles, so I washed the cut gently and dressed it with a 'cosmetic removal pad' (always handy) and bandaged it up.



So on Monday I will have to decide whether it is bad enough to need to go to the vet for stitches, or whether my motherly love and attention will aid it in healing itself.   Knowing that the vet = stitches, anti-biotics, dressing, an appointment for a checkup, more anti-biotics and dressing = emptying my bank account, I'm going to aim for the latter option first and see how it gets on.... besides I'd have to find someone to give me a lift to the vet's.

Of course my caring-mother-self will feel guilty for not rushing him off for immediate professional attention, but I think I can live with that.



7 comments:

  1. Juniper: Like mother, like daughter, or like father, like son, cliches are something I try to avoid. I am very happy to hear you can live with your decision (which was the right one, by the way). I did not want to say "like caring-mother-self, like dog."

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  2. Haha, yes that is a bit of a mouthful isn't it! Luckily Django is a very good patient; he once let Mr H. ease an inch long, thick splinter out of one of his pads without flinching.

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  3. Did u put a disinfectant like Neosporin on it? I bet that wrap will help out a lot.

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  4. Oh, what a precious puppy. And what a crafty human you are. Best for today is good enough--hopefully it'll be the start of healing for the pup.

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  5. I hope he'll be fine...i would have done the same . Speedy recovery to the sweet pup

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  6. KBF - I haven't got anything like that; I'm relying on dog saliva disinfectant! I'm always wary of using human things on a dog after we put savlon on a lab we had and it brought him out in a horrible rash and he lost his hair.

    I think it might be one of those shall I / shan't I decisions tomorrow; the trouble is I know what vets are like once you're in the door, there's no control over what they decided your dog needs ;-) Not that I would ever avoid going if I really needed to (he spent 3 days there after the crash being checked over), but sometimes it's tempting to rush off there for the slightest thing. This morning I was thinking about how it would heal up if he was in the wild, just with dog spit and patience. Now there's a title for a blog...

    Our puppy is 10 1/2 but still our puppy :-)

    ~Juniper~

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  7. Oh so sympathise with the shall we shalln't we decisions re the vet. Definitely err on the wait and see................and then wait again :-)

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