Atrayou tore one of his nails off yesterday. I don't really know how, just that it happened somewhere outside. He must have done about twenty laps around the yard, and seemed perfectly fine. Afterwards he came inside and into the kitchen to get his "I'm a good boy for going potty outside" treat, and he was dripping blood all over the floor. Luckily he listens well, so I had him go lay down on one of the dog beds so I could get a closer look, and of course he lays down with his bloody toe facing the ground so I can't see it. I grabbed a roll of paper towels and some flour and tried my best to get it to stop bleeding. At the same time I was trying to call Christine to find out what I should do, but she wasn't answering, so I just called the vet where he was neutered, and they told me there was nothing they could do if the whole nail was torn out already. Great. So I'm sitting there, holding twenty paper towels around Atrayou's foot, with blood and flour and bloody paper towels everywhere when I finally got a hold of Christine. She called another vet for me, and they said the same thing. I finally ended up taking him over to Christine's where she washed his toe off and bandaged it up for me. It was funny because right when I got a hold of her, I took the paper towel off his foot, and it looked SO GROSS, so I was totally freaked out when I was on the phone. Apparently when blood mixes with flour it clumps together and looks like flesh, and these little flesh-like clumps were just falling off his foot, and he kept licking it and it was so disgusting. Anyway, he's doing better now and I have no idea what I would do without Christine around to help me out.
But apparently that wasn't enough bloody grossness for one day.
After I got home from Christine's, I cleaned up all the blood and flour and threw the dog beds into the washing machine, and cooked myself a veggie burger because I was starving. I let the dogs out again, they both came into the kitchen to get their treats, and there was blood on the floor AGAIN! Let me mention right now that Brooke has had a scary bump on her leg that she's going to have checked out (actually she already did, that will come later) and sometime last week she tore the skin by her dewclaw. So, yes, now there is blood on the floor again, and I look the dogs over and see that Brooke's leg is bleeding. I grab my paper towels and bandages and everything else and tell Brooke to lay down. I couldn't see anything because my dumb living room needs more lights, so I ran back and grabbed the flashlight. When I finally got a good look at it I saw that she had actually torn her leg open, it was maybe about an inch long gash. And there was another spot a little higher up where the skin was torn off. I quickly bandaged it up and called the only vet I know of that's open at 7:00 pm (thanks to Christine!) and thankfully she referred me to another one of their branches where I could take Brooke in without it having to be an emergency (less $). The nice vet I talked to said she could take care of Brooke as long as someone was able to carry her just in case she was still too wobbly from the anesthesia. Anytime a greyhound owner hears "anesthesia" they shudder. So I called Kory at school and said, "Get ready, we're taking Brooke to get stitches!" The roads were really bad last night, but we finally made it to the vet's and they were super nice. The vet unwrapped my terrible bandage job and within a second said, "Yeah, we're going to need to put some sutures in there." Since they were going to put her under, I showed her the bump on Brooke's leg and she said she would take that off too. We left once they took her in because they were actually closed at that point, and an hour later (so fast!) we went back and picked up our sweet Brookey. She did just fine, and she actually got a new toy for free and the vet also gave us some eye medication (one of her eyes has had some discharge the past few days) for free! So Brooke is all patched up, the bad thing is that both areas are in really bad spots. The mass that was removed is right on her knee, which can easily tear back open. And Brooke is a very determined licker, Christine had problems with her pulling out her stitches when she was spayed. So you can see in that picture she's wearing an e collar, but I think it might be a little bit small. She can still reach her leg, so we're watching her like crazy.
Yeah, I'm a little worried about what's going on in my backyard. When Brooke first tore her dewclaw, I figured maybe it was from a stick or something. So the next day I went out and collected as many sticks as I could see (high winds + lots of trees = millions of fallen sticks), so now I'm not really sure what to do. For right now we're leash-walking them when we go out, but I would really like to know what caused three accidents in one week.
