When you last read about Juliette, she was about to come home drugged and wrapped in sticky plaster, and in retrospect, I wish that we had kept her drugged since then.
Not because she’s so very cute when she’s stoned (Jolie’s much cuter, actually, wobbling around and licking everything within reach very, very slowly). In fact, I only knew that she was at all because she acted kind of…odd, sleeping lots but then suddenly standing up very decisively, staying that way for a minute, and then plunking down again. Wash, rinse, and repeat 30 minutes later.
Anyway, I mainly regret stopping her yummy, yummy pain meds as prescribed because it became clear early on that she was not nearly so tolerant of her bandage as Jolie had been (much to our surprise). Trying to stop her from licking it was like trying to build a sand castle under water: no one but you has any idea why you’re waving your hands around. I can’t blame her for wanting the thing off; I didn’t much like it, myself, what with how it rained a little every day that she wore it, and did you know that our puppy’s favorite pass-time is rolling in the dirt?
Seriously. It’s like she’s getting some kind of contact high.
So by 13 days later, the thing was pretty unappealing. Which, evidently, was Juliette’s assessment as well, because when I went out for two hours (for the least satisfying meeting in history, as it turns out), she went from casual licking into Complete Destruction Mode.
I came back to my proud-looking beagle with what used to be a foot-long bandage bunched into about three thick inches around her haunches.
And called the vet.
Who could fit me in about three hours later, during which time I could almost swear that Juliette didn’t so much as look at her sides; she’d already done her damage. And plenty of it, I might add, since our shocked vet showed me that she had spent a good chunk of her time in confinement licking her stitches.
Crusty, violently red, swollen…I really wish that I could un-see that.
So…new bandage. For nine more days. I cracked and gave Jolie a bath after one (it’s usually an activity that they like to share), but Juliette wasn’t getting any sweeter-smelling. Also fun? Explaining to people over and over that no, she’s not sick or injured. Really! She’s fine! Spayed, is all.
Yes, that’s too bad for her. Well actually, no, I don’t think that she’s really all that sad about it. No need to get so–no, it’s not tragic! Seven months–no, I’m from the U.S., and there they always do it before her first heat. Otherwise it doesn’t do much at all to prevent cancer, and–really, she’s fine. She does not “look unhappy.” Shrug and shake your head all you want; just be walking away while you do, ‘kay?
Anyway.
On Saturday, three days into the new bandage, she managed to burrow into it through the bottom. She’d been all curled up; it looked like she was sleeping. Until, that is, she lifted her head and I saw the bloody wad of cotton dangling from her mouth.
But this time I was smarter; I hooked her up immediately and stalked off to the vet. The waiting room was packed, since he was doing something that was making a cat scream bloody murder which had apparently set him back by more than an hour, but he very graciously slipped us in between a few of the next patients. “It’s fine,” he announced. “The wound was too far for her to reach.” A little more plaster for good measure, and I stomped home again with her, feeling relieved but not especially “better.”
Today, though. Today it came off.
It was much, much harder on her then when she’d slid it off herself; she lost a lot of hair and her poor sensitive belly skin looked raw and painful. She yelped and climbed me and snapped at the vet and struggled like mad, but it was finally all done, and we got to see the pretty little healed incision on her left side…
…and the bumpy black worm of a scab on her right.
“She just needs maybe eight more days,” the vet said, showing off their new “veterinary vest” that would make the whole thing so much easier. It’s this stretchy little fabric onsie that the bandage goes on top of, so that it won’t take her fur off this time. Except, of course, that they didn’t have her size yet, and so only the front half of the bandage is over it.
Do you understand what I’m saying, here? My dog has gone from a bandage to a bigger bandage to an even bigger bandage to a navy blue vest that’s half folded up under the stupidest-looking bandage to date.
Edit: We are currently between decent cameras, and I couldn’t get her to turn so that the logo side (seriously) was facing the camera. But Andrea asked for a photo, and Andrea brings me cupcakes, so:
I have, you will understand, absolutely no intention of trying to prevent her from shredding the vest, which I did tell them that she would do. I think that we’ve all earned that little nugget of joy.