My Little Conehead

Even though I have been Molly's step mom since the wife and I got together three years ago and we adopted Laney about a year and a half ago, I didn't truly have my first "gutwrenching parent" moment until Wednesday. (Note: I was distraught when we left the pups while we went to Hawaii for a week in November, but I knew they were in good hands with the wife's parents/local puppy camp they had been going to for years) For a few weeks, Laney has had a couple gashes in her big floppy dog years. We think they started while either roughhousing with Mols or shaking her head and the ears hitting her collar. Either way, they had been there, but were scabbed over and didn't look to be really be hurting her. Then that changed about a week or so ago.

Lanes would shake her head and then came the blood. I originally thought the scabs opened because of the cold weather in Boston and she was playing around so much outside now that the pups have a backyard at their disposal 24-7. We tried repairing the ear with a "new-skin" type product made for dogs.

Finally on Monday I made an appointment with a local vet who my friend trusts treating her three cats. The nurse let me know that she would need to fast before the visit in case they need to immediately go in for surgery. This led to a lot of ice cubes Tuesday night to make her think she was getting a treat. :)

So I took her up to the vet at Central Animal Hospital in Stoneham, Mass at 9am. We went in and the vet let me know she would have to go in to surgery. I had tried to prep myself, but I lost it as soon as I got back in to the car. I think having to hand her off to a group I had just met 15 minutes prior was what really set off the waterworks. Plus, she hadn't been put under since we had gotten her so I was just hoping she would make it through.

Thankfully the vet kept me in the loop all afternoon and she pulled through with flying colors. I was at work so my parents were able to pick her up at 5:30 that night. I was glad she didn't have to stay overnight since they didn't have a crew at the office during the night and I didn't want her to be alone.

My parents brought her home and promptly texted me this sad and pathetic little pic:

Apparently she was loopy from surgery and disoriented with the cone that she kept walking in to walls and had to be carried up the stairs because she couldn't navigate the stairs on her own. Once I knew she was fine, I was able to laugh at how she was acting.

(Have you all seen the movie Up? It is from that movie that I got the term "cone of shame." In case anyone was wondering why I have been constantly calling it that. :P)

Since I felt so bad about the surgery, I let her sleep with us in bed that night. Let me tell you I woke up with "cone" marks around my face/neck as she kept trying to snuggle in to my armpit/neck where she usually likes to sleep.

We all had to go to work on Thursday so the wife fed her, took her out and put her in the crate for the day. Since I wasn't going to make it home til 2pm, I had my dad check on her at 11:30am. She seemed in good spirits, but as he ate his lunch. He noticed that she managed to somehow get her ears out of the protective bandages and was promptly spraying blood everywhere. I describe the kitchen as looking like a scene out of Law & Order: SVU.

So I once I got home from work I headed back to the vet (with the check engine light now on on my car) and picked up the patient ... again. This time she had a much bigger bandage on her head, as well as a bigger cone. They also gave me some sedatives to give her this weekend to keep her from really roughhousing so the ears can heal.

Needless to say today I have been on patient duty and it has been a lot of lying around. She seems to be okay and I am just hoping that canceling my plans for the weekend will pay off and she will recover quickly.

But for now we are taking it easy and returning for a follow up with the vet on Monday at 3pm.

Thank you all so much for your kind words of support and encouragement on Twitter and Facebook over the past couple days. I know in the end it ended up being a very mild surgery, but in the moment it seemed like the biggest surgery you could imagine. I have no idea how I will one day handle having kids if this is how I am with my little pups.