Charlie is my dog. For the most part, he's a good dog, he just has had some unfortunate injuries. Now you would think that since he spends 99% of his life in a yard with a fence, how injured could he get? Well here's a picture of him that I took maybe 3 or for years ago.
He's a handsome dog isn't he?
Notice the white tip of his tail? Umm, yeah, that's no longer there. Apparently one night, Charlie was chasing his tail and he got lucky...or unlucky I suppose. At some point, he managed, we think, to catch his tail and chomp down on it. Soooooo, to make a long story short, we had to take him to the vet and chop off the tip of his tail. So now his tail is a little shorter.
Fast forward to July, 2008. We were at Keao's sister, Cassandra's, party at our house and we noticed that Charlie had a bump on his toe. It was pretty big, but we just figured if we leave it alone it would eventually heal and go away. Of course, as you may suspect by my great job of foreshadowing, it did not go away and it turned out to be a tumor. So we took him into the vet and had it removed. That part was easy.
We brought him home and put on one of those collar thingies (for the record, they're called Elizabethan collars). Here's a particularly evil looking picture of Charlie taken by my brother Stanton.
Note the pink bandage on his right paw
So we bring him home and we notice something a bit odd. The cone that's supposed to be protecting him from himself doesn't quite work right. It's just a little too short. He can still reach his paw. Let that sink in for a bit. The protective cone doesn't protect his paw. It's useless. Of course since he can get to his paw we scold him everytime he gets near it.
Well yesterday morning we wake up and find that he did indeed get to his paw. In fact he got into his paw a little too much. The bandage was shredded and there was blood everywhere! Keao said it looked like a crime scene (except we know how the guilty party is). So we panic and call the vet only to find out that the vet is closed on Wednesdays. But she has a pager for emergencies and we figured this qualifies as one. Of course she calls back and doesn't offer much sympathy. Like it's our fault. We only had what she gave us. So she tells us to use some manila folders and to extend the collar. Umm, it's a good thing we have manila folders...actually we don't have manila folders so we had to get creative. Good thing I was a summer fun leader with a certification for arts and crafts.
After a few cuts with a scissors and some masking tape this is what we came up with.
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
I think he can now get cable on that thing (or at least hear very well)
It's kind of gross, but can you see the blood everywhere?
So anyway, Keao took him back to the vet this morning. I'll let her fill you in on the rest of the morbid details. Meanwhile I think we need to figure out how to permanently extend that collar.
3 comments:
Yea you're back! Poor Charlie! He hasn't had a very good time lately. I would have been worried too. Especially seeing blood everywhere. And how do you like that doc giving you a hard time. Like you deal with problems like that all the time. I like the new collar. Very stylish! He'll be all the rage in the doggy world.
Btw you'll have to change your 'about me'. We now have 3 Starbucks if you count the one in Borders now. :)
You could change his name to Radar. ...fits in with Charlie as a communications sort of thing...
hopefully, I am no longer convinced that the vet hates us. She seems to laugh at your jokes now. Or maybe she just really likes Charlie and is using us to get close to him.
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