Lucky Dorito

If you’ve been by this blog lately – you’ve heard the woes of poor Lillie’s ear troubles. Just to recap, if you’ve perhaps missed out….

It all started a week ago, when Beebo emailed me one afternoon when they’d arrived home from school to find Lillie’s ear all swollen. She was worried about her and even had the presence of mind to take pics for me to see.

I immediately called the vet, who said to bring her on in. I was still with a patient at work so I asked my hubby to take her for me. By the time they arrived, he said her ear was about an inch and a half thick.

He returned an hour later – without my dog.

They said her constant *flapping* of her itchy ears caused a blood vessel within the ear to rupture and the ear was pooling with blood.

It would require surgery to allow the blood to drain out plus an overnight stay at the vet’s office.

When I picked her up the next day, she had a big bandage on her ear and a lovely E-collar to keep her from pulling the bandage off and allow some healing. I was given pain meds (enough for 2 days) and antibiotics for her and told to keep the ear bandaged for three whole days. The sutures would not be removed for 21 days.

She was quite funny to watch wearing her *lampshade*, like a bumper car, running into everything (including my rump half the time)

and I’ve been calling her *buckethead* for days.

And then….

on Sunday, we were allowed to unbandage her ear.

I got my first look at it post-surgery.

Let me just say, the laughing stopped.

It looked horrible.

So bad, in fact, I’m afraid to post the pictures here.

(Email me if you want to see – I don’t mind sharing it… but I didn’t want to freak anyone out either!)

We originally were advised to leave it unbandaged after the third day, but…. there was far too much bleeding for that. We bandaged it back up and on Monday morning, I called the vet. She prescribed a sedative and a steroid shot to reduce the itching (which would reduce the flapping and allow the ear to heal better without being flapped around to re-open the healing drainage holes over and over).

My husband and I met at home for lunch on Monday so we could eat and give her the meds. We decided to give her the sedative first, letting it kick in before he gave her the shot in her thigh muscle. (We’ve both administered oodles of shots in our lines of work… but not to dogs!) We were worried if she flinched and the needle accidentally broke off – then geez…. another surgery would be required!

The sedative worked wonderfully and he was able to give her the shot with no problems whatsoever, thank goodness.

She’s been fairly drugged since then, poor girl. After that first day, when I realized how hard one little tablet kicked her hiney, I’ve been cutting them in half for her. I don’t want her stoned, just relaxed.

Anyway…. it’s been an exciting week around here.

Wanna see the pics? Just drop me a line.

NOW….. that you’ve read ALL that and are feeling sufficiently all “awww POOR doggie…” then it’s time to tell you this:

Don’t let the droopy-eyed semi-stoned appearance fool ya.

Don’t let the 23 hours a day of sleep fool ya.

Don’t let those big golden-brown eyes that look at you with such anguish fool ya.

Don’t be feeling all sorry for the little twerp.

You know why?

Because last night at 9pm when I sleepily walked the little sneak outside to use the potty before heading to an early bedtime… she disappeared under the swingset and darted out of sight.

She returned 0.12 seconds later, huffing and puffing. I thought it was from exertion after literally DAYS of doing nothing.

As she got closer to me… I realized it was because she had caught

another

stinkin

possum

IN HER MOUTH.

She was huffing and puffing to breathe AROUND it’s limp body hanging in her mouth!

She was wearing the e-collar and carrying a possum in her mouth.

GOOD GRIEF!

I yelled. She dropped it. The possum played possum.

I did the bug dance.

Lillie wagged her whole body in pride at herself as she grinned at me.

Sheesh.

And I wonder why I’m half-crazy at times? Seems to be a moot point, doesn’t it?

Trackback URI | Comments RSS