Covid and dogs with grass seeds in their paws

 Recently I succumbed to the Covid wave here in Australia, and spent a couple of weeks in bed. When I started to feel better (and was not required to quarantine), I took Peppa for a walk in a local park. It's winter here, of course, and the grass in the park was mowed and short, but I think that was the day Peppa got a seed in her paw. 

At one stage, after playing vigorously with lots of friendly pups, she lay down and didn't want to walk. I thought she must be exhausted. In retrospect, I ask myself why a healthy young pup would be exhausted by some play. Now, with 20/20 hindsight, I think she might have had a grass seed stuck in her paw. 

I'm resolved to check her paws after every outing to a grassy area.

So, she began to limp. We went to the clinic and the vet on duty checked her and thought perhaps she had broken a toe. An x-ray ensued, and it was sent off to an expert for another opinion. While we waited, we came home with a cone on her head and pain relief medication - Metacam. 

She sat around staring morosely into space, and the pain relief injection she'd been given at the vet seemed to have spaced her out so completely that she couldn't even keep her legs under her and kept swaying and sinking to the floor. Such a stressful day.

I took the cone off, because she wasn't paying any attention to her foot. And I didn't give the Metacam because I thought she wasn't in pain. (I've since been told it was an anti-inflammatory also, so I guess I should have given it.)

Back to the vet clinic a few days later, for an examination by our usual vet. He couldn't see any sign of what the problem was, but suggested an operation to open the swellings (two on top of her toes and one between her pads). It was organised for two days later.

What a relief it was when the operating vet called to say that after a long search she had found a grass seed buried in the flesh of the paw. 

So, home again with pain medication and antibiotics and instructions to keep the bandaged foot dry. Hmm...that meant no walking in our jungle of a back garden, which at this time of year is damp with dew for most of the day.

All was going well until last night when I noticed Peppa had removed the bandage and dressing. So, off at midnight to the Animal Emergency Clinic to get it rebandaged.

But what a surprise awaited us there! It was fortunately a quiet night there, so the usual offering of stressed and suffering animals wasn't as bad as it can be. And who was there?

The first Lhasa apso we have ever met! So exciting. He's a Golden, and looks a lot like Peppa, so we were very pleased to have it confirmed that she is also a Golden (which is what she was sold to us as). And the owner knew the breeder we had got Peppa from and said she's a good breeder, which made us feel even better. 

So a good ending to a stressful evening. Peppa has a nice new bandage on and we'll continue to keep it clean and dry (here's hoping) until we go tomorrow to have it checked. The vet nurse at AEC says it's healing well.

The other owner has also had a grass seed removed from his dog, so we're warned to be ever-alert after walks. He said it's because of their thick fur that they tend to pick up grass seeds.

Forewarned is forearmed.

still resting the cut paw

It's  been a quiet week and I can feel my fitness slipping away and my waistline thickening, because Penny is still confined to the house to wait for her injured paw to recover, and I've discovered I don't walk if I don't have the motivation of taking her with me.

We're starting to play games at dinner time, feeding her meals as rewards for picking up her toys and putting them in the bucket; finding the nominated toy (not too successful); taking a bow; backing up; 'paws up'. Anything to keep her mind active, even if her body is not.

It's darned hard to find activities that don't involve using her front paws. I gave her a Kong filled with nice things (a couple of bits of kibble, a smear of peanut butter, some raw carrot pieces, a bit of cheese) and she worked diligently at it for about twenty minutes. But seeing she was holding it firm with her front paw, this wasn't such a good idea! She ended up with a sore paw.

Not long now, I hope. I think it's nearly healed up. We've been swishing it with saline solution twice a day and squirting Betadine onto the cut. Bandages are giving us lots of entertainment - I crouch on the floor, carefully wrapping her paw in nice clean gauze, see her settled, go away and walk back in to find the bandage on the floor and Penny resting comfortably. Lucky her paw is so small and only needs a short piece of bandage - otherwise I think we'd have gone through even more bandaging than we have. I'll have to refine my bandage-tying technique.

Penny's poor sore paw

On Sunday, Penny cut her front paw while we were walking in the bush.

I guess we've been lucky this has never happened before. However, it did mean that I was unsure how to deal with it. First I washed the cut with salty water, a couple of times, then I bandaged it loosely. Which left the problem of how to go outside for toileting without getting the bandage wet. (We've had lots of rain lately, which you won't find me complaining about after the fifteen or more years of drought we endured.)

Well, that didn't work all that well. There are a couple of plastic bags lying somewhere in the yard, lost within minutes of our going out in the dark.

Today, when we came back to Melbourne, I decided to scout the Net for more information, and found some sites that were quite helpful. I was pleased that Betadine was recommended on some of them, as I've got Betadine spray. So I've sprayed it and put a fresh bandage on, and we'll see how things look tomorrow.

One recommendation that seemed sensible was to wrap only a couple of layers around the paw, because if the bandaging is too thick, the dog will notice it more, and therefore be more likely to lick at it. (I recall from Penny's previous biopsy bandaging how important it is to keep the bandage dry.)

This squidoo says we should rebandage the paw twice a day, so I guess I'll do that.

The Dog Owner's Home Veterinary Handbook says a fresh wound longer than half an inch should be sutured, but says if the wound is older than twelve hours, suturing is questionable. If I'd been in Melbourne I would have taken her straight to the vet to see if stitches would help. But we were too far away.

At the moment she seems to be comfortable, and in fact isn't even limping much. She's taking her weight fully on both front legs.

I'll call the vet tomorrow, to check whether I'm doing the right thing, and I'm going to ask about a recommendation by Julia Szabo on a dogster site, that the wound will heal faster if it is kept soft:

Then, to help speed healing, I applied some Buck Mountain Wound Balm, the same excellent ointment I used on my dog Tiki when he was fighting cancer. This stuff packs the triple healing punch of burdock, yarrow, and echinacea, and is a first-rate item to keep in the K9 first aid kit. Without some kind of ointment to keep the tissue soft, a wound takes longer to heal - and with the location of this wound, recovery speed really counts.

On looking at the Buck Mountain Herbal Gold site, I see that it is recommended for minor cuts and closed wounds, and that using salve on an infection that is not clean and dry might accelerate the infection, so I think I'll definitely ask for advice from the vet before doing anything other than keeping the wound clean and infection-free.

I might try using aloe vera, if the vet says it is important to keep the paw pad soft.