WHO'S a poor puppy?

OK, she's not a puppy (although we keep calling her that), but Montana is definitely a poor doggie.

I wasn't going to post about her again because three days in a row seems like a bit much to talk about my dog (although really I could talk about her forever because OMG I LOVE HER and everything she does is obviously fascinating). But then she had a little incident yesterday evening.

When we finished work we took her to the dog park for the second day in a row. She was doing really well and we were very impressed. She was running around, chasing dogs and letting them chase her and generally interacting and playing very well. Then she started coming up to Torsten and me and not leaving, and then I looked down and saw a big smudge on her side.

I looked closer and it wasn't a smudge, it was blood. It was hard to see through her fur, but when we pulled it apart we could see that it was a pretty deep gash. We still don't know how it happened. We were watching her the entire time, and we didn't see any incidents at all. The vet thinks maybe she was running and gashed herself on a stick caught on a fence.

Of course, it was after business hours so we couldn't take her to her regular vet (if having her first appointment set for three days from now counts as "regular"). Luckily, in researching vets a few days ago, I had found a highly recommended emergency clinic (though I hadn't expected to need to go there quite so SOON), so after a call to a friend to get her to look up the clinic details I'd emailed to myself (because of course I hadn't brought my BlackBerry with me), we went there.

The whole thing ended up costing $200, but actually, the emergency vet was great. They saw her almost right away, they treated her well, and they were very skilled. They shaved a square patch around the laceration, flushed out the wound, and gave her several staples to hold it closed. She was so well-behaved that she didn't even have to be sedated during the process, which is apparently very unusual. They also gave her a shot of antibiotics and gave us seven days' worth of the medication to follow up with.

Then she started licking her wound, and they said that to keep her from doing that, or chewing on it, we could either put a t-shirt on her or put one of those big plastic cones around her neck.

Guess which option we chose?