Last Saturday, we hiked with several friends to a place called Hog Island. I didn't quite realize just how far it was going to be from my house, but it turned out to be a good 3.5 mi or so hike just out to where the island is. 2 miles to one of our classmate's house and then the extra 1.5 miles or so off road through the forest. It was a long and tiring walk, but it was really nice out and it felt really good to be out and about with both human and doggie friends! When we finally arrived, we were rewarded with a small beach were we could dip and relax in while the dogs played chase and swam. Lucy is not much of a water dog (more of that in a later post), but she adores playing chase. She's a bit on the shy side too, so it tends to take her a little while before she becomes really comfortable and wants to play.
After we had been there for about 30 or 40 minutes, Lucy started a game of chase with a few of the bigger dogs with us. They were having a great time. Racing around trees, into and out of the water, through the sand, lots of fun for a dog. And then Lucy came back limping. Uh oh. One of the girls with us noticed it first and went over to investigate. Much to our dismay, the limping was caused by a large gash in her second toe pad (for those not in vet med, that would be the 1st toe pad on the foot closes to the other foot). Awesome. Remember, we're 1.5 miles away from the nearest house/civilization. This means we get to take turns carrying Lucy back! Yay. 31 pounds feels a lot heavier than it should.
She was seen on emergency services by our teaching hospital, bandaged up, given pain meds and antibiotics, and put on strict exercise restrictions. Lucky us. We've been changing the bandage daily and adhering to the medication schedule as best we can (I can be forgetful sometimes...). The exercise restriction is so that she avoids putting to much weight and movement on the open, healing tissue. It's kind of like if you've ever cut the skin over your knuckles and it takes forever to heal because you're constantly moving your fingers. Paw pads take a long time to heal just because of the type of tissue they are and where they're located.
The exercise restriction is driving us nuts. She's a young and otherwise healthy dog. She wants to run and play, she wants to go for walks, and she doesn't understand why we're no longer doing any of that. I've been playing around with tying her foot up in a sling a little bit and that has helped us go for walks, but it's just not the same. My little tripod dog hops along and gets hot and tired very quickly.
We had our first recheck appointment yesterday which went well. They cleaned the wound really well and basically repeated all the previous orders: daily bandage changes, give the same meds, and keep her exercise limited. Our next appointment is in a week, hopefully we won't need too many more appointments after that because it will be healed!
It's a long and slow process for sure. She is very bored and desperately wants to play with her friends, but she will have plenty of time to make up for lost ground in hopefully a month or less from now!
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