Doggy injury

So, the reason that you didn't see Montana in that photo of us at the top of Pikes Peak is that she wasn't there. Shocking, I know! But seriously, we would normally take her with us on an outdoorsy excursion like that. And in fact, when we left the house without her, she was very upset.

But there was a reason we didn't take her with us, and it's that she seems to have somehow injured herself last Friday. Torsten was out of town, and I wasn't working, and she was acting antsy, so I decided to take her out to the state park that has an off-leash dog area with a pond for the dogs to swim. Everything was fine and I didn't notice any problems with her at all.

When we got home, I left her in the backyard and went to the gym. And when I got back a couple hours later, her foot was bleeding. I didn't think much of it, assuming she had cut herself on a rock or something. She didn't really want me to touch it, and it stopped bleeding on its own, so I figured it wasn't a big deal and left it alone.

But later, when I checked, I discovered that she was missing an entire toenail. Seriously, the whole thing is gone. I'm no detective, but given that the blood starts in a big patch in the middle of the patio, in one of her favorite spots to lie, and then is tracked in bloody paw prints in only one direction, I've developed a theory. I think she tore her nail or something while we were at the park, and then while she was in the yard she chewed on it and somehow yanked it out.

Anyway, when I saw this, I called the vet and they told me that as long as she didn't appear to be in severe pain (and she wasn't), and it wasn't still bleeding (and it didn't), I didn't need to bring it in, but instead I should just clean it, bandage it to keep her from licking, and keep an eye on it to make sure it didn't become infected.

Of COURSE Torsten was out of town when this happened, because it's so easy to clean a sensitive wound on a dog by yourself, you know? But I managed it. I cleaned it with soap and water, then with peroxide (which she did NOT like, but it was necessary to kill any bacteria that might have gotten in there). Then I put Neosporin on it (again: she was not a fan) and bandaged it up by putting an old sock on her and attaching it with medical tape. That, too, she was NOT pleased with.

In fact, I think the bandage exacerbated it. Without it, she wasn't even limping, but with it, she was actually hopping on three legs, and when we took it off later, it had blood on it. I think it must have been pressed against the wound, irritating it. So we stopped using it once we got home and could keep an eye on her to make sure she wasn't licking it.

But yeah. No big deal, but it did mean that she spent all weekend trapped at home, and we still haven't brought her to the dog park or anything, because we'll afraid she'll reopen the wound somehow while playing, and then it will get infected. I'm not quite sure how long to wait to take her back there. And in the meantime, the poor dog is house-bound and not happy about it.

In fact, when we got home on Saturday night to feed her before heading back out to the concert, she was PISSED that we were leaving her again. I guess she's not used to being alone for that long, since we work from home and often take her with us when we go places. But it took us forever to put her back in the yard, because every time we would start to close the door, she would come dashing back in the house. And by "dashing" I mean "hopping on three legs as fast as she could."

Really, it was adorable. But I didn't take any pictures or videos, tragically. It just seemed cruel when she was clearly so unhappy. So instead, I leave you with a photo of her from back in the day when she had all her toenails: