You know those weeks you wish you could have stayed in bed? My dog Sam is having one of them. Some of you have kept up with the progress, turned digression, turned progress since last Thursday but for those who have missed it, here we go. I’ll try to keep it succinct.
Thursday, February 11th:
Started like any other day but with one little twist. Sam was being picked up by the great people at Dog Party USA (seriously… love those guys) for a trip to the vet to take care of his, ahem… boy bits. When I got him (rescue) I checked and it seemed as though they’d been taken care of by a previous owner. Turns out they were laying in wait, waaay up inside. One finally emerged and it was now time to get fixed. Chaddie picked him up and took him to the animal hospital for a quick snip on one and a search and rescue on the other.
It turned out that the second one was hiding a little better than they originally assumed and after two more incisions, the job was done… or so we thought.
Fat Tuesday, February 16th:
For the first time since his surgery, I noticed some swelling and he was a little more interested in the general region than in previous days. I gave him is antibiotic and a pain killer, wrapped him up in his comfy cone and headed to dinner, coincidentally, with Chaddie from Dog Party and her husband Charlie; good friends of ours. Chaddie suggested that it might be getting infected and I should put a hot compress on it when we got home. If it was still swollen in the morning we’d have to go back to the vet.
I stayed up with Sam, hot compress in hand until after 3am tuesday and woke up to the grim discovery that the swelling was worse and Sam had gotten around the comfy cone to do a little exploratory surgery of his own. Stitches were missing and the usually chipper furball was a wreck. Obviously in pain, I called Chaddie and headed for the vet.
Wednesday, February 17th:
Turns out he had a ceroma at the site of the largest incision. Click here for a quick definition on that one. basically, he was a little overweight and in the search for the missing boy bit, they got into a fatty deposit which subsequently started breaking down all translating into one miserable golden retriever.
Surgery followed to take care of the ceroma and restitch Sam’s own undoing. That was followed by the fitting of the “not-so-comfy” cone seen in the picture above. The poor guy is so pathetic and its hard to keep him in the cone but we’ll err on the side of not going back onto the operating table again this week. He’s pretty well medicated and we go back in 10 days to get the stitches removed given there’s no more drama.
One positive side note. While he was under on Wednesday, the good doctor gave him some liposuction to bring back his boyish figure so he’ll be all the rage with the lady retrievers… and he won’t care… Sorry buddy, you can’t win ‘em all.
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