Doggie Scout Merit Badges

We can file this post under the heading “never a dull moment.” Bettina and I had another adventure on

Monday evening. Since it’s that time of the year, I found myself mowing the yard Monday after work. The rule at our house is that once I’m done mowing, the kids get to go out into the back yard and run around like crazy in the newly mown back yard. They think it’s great to smell everything after it’s been chopped into bits. It’s a bit like a newly tossed salad. I go out with them because I enjoy the smell of a newly mown lawn and its fun to watch the four legged nutters run and play.


I should have taken into account it was a Monday. I had already had to figure out a way to jump start the tractor since the battery had died over the winter. The kids played and chased each other around. Then they came tearing up the hill from the far end of the lawn. Bettina didn’t gauge the distance right and she had to make a sharp turn to avoid hitting the fence gate. Instead she clipped her leg on the gate as she squeaked by. I held my breath because Bettina has been known to be somewhat accident prone. She kept running and

came to a stop. Nothing seemed wrong and she started running again. I let my breath out and that’s when the screaming started.

She stood there holding up her right rear leg, screaming. I reached her and she was still screaming. There was so much screaming.  I could immediately see the cause of her distress. Just above the hock on that leg was a large tear. You can take a moment and look at that part of your greyhound.  I'll wait for you.  There isn’t much skin there. So when it let go, everything that is in there was suddenly clearly visible. Arteries, vessels, ligaments, tendons and yes, bone. It had, in fact, torn through on the other side as well. If one had been of the mind, one could have put their finger all the way through.

I have to say that my first experience with Bettina and skin tears trained me for this instance and I apparently

learned my lessons. This tear was ten times worse and my initial instinct was to panic just like last time. But I managed to keep panic, nausea and tears at bay. I tried to get Bettina to stay where she was outside while I went inside to get the first aid kit. Of course, being Bettina, she had her own ideas and when I got back with the kit, she was laying down in the living room. Having exerted herself, the blood began to spew and there were splatters of blood up the stairs, all across the kitchen floor and soaking into the carpet.

I managed to get her bandaged with a roll of gauze and covered that with vet wrap. During this time Blue was outside standing like a handsome white statue at the bottom of the stairs, trying to peer into the open door. I called him in and got him in his crate. I got the car and drove it up to the back door. Her Highness Crown Regent of Fussypants got a carried to the car like a foreign pasha. Ms. Fussypants did not learn much about being a good patient from our last adventure as she made me pull over on the way to the vet to put her muzzle on so she wouldn’t tear off the bandages. Meanwhile she’s spreading blood all over the back of the car.

I had called ahead to the emergency vet so they were expecting us when we got there. They checked her over and prepared paperwork for surgery. I had the discussion with the doctor about greyhounds and anesthesia and I took the leap of faith that I’d get her back in one piece. Off she went on three legs into the bowels of the emergency vet and I took up my position on the hard wooden benches in the waiting room. Why are they always hard and wooden?

I sat there for about 100 years (actually 1 ½ hours as judged by the fact that three half hour shows came and went). Then I was jolted from my stupor by an unearthly howling. There was no mistaking the voice. It was Bettina. She continued howling and the howls sounded so lonely and scared that I must have had my thoughts clearly on face. The receptionist told me she was OK, just waking up from anesthesia and that all dogs did that. I was still considering going out back, finding her and just cuddling her in my arms. Not doing just that was amazingly hard. But at least I had conclusive proof that she had come through surgery and was still breathing. And on more sober consideration, it is not unlike Bettina to have something to say about every situation she finds herself in.

Shortly after the howling subsided the doctor came out to let me know they had been successful at stitching

her up. It looked like the bone, tendons and ligaments were all intact with no damage. Bettina had also barely missed damaging some major arteries in that area. All in all, we were pretty lucky. The doctor let me know that as soon as they could get her walking around, I could take her home.

A few minutes later they came back out to tell me that Bettina was refusing to walk. She had put the brakes on and wouldn’t budge. At that point I knew that Bettina was most assuredly back. They brought me out back to see if I could get her moving. I came upon a half-circle of vet techs and other veterinary personnel all looking down at Bettina. She was wearing a cone of shame, had all four feet firmly planted on the floor and was leaning back for all she was worth. She was still quite stoned so it took her a moment to recognize my voice from behind her and a few more moments to figure out how to turn around. But shortly she was in my arms asking me WTF?

With a vet tech operating the lead, I was able to coax her out to the lobby. She was hard pressed to walk a

straight line. The anesthesia hang-over combined with her unfamiliarity with the operation of an Elizabethan collar had her swerving, weaving, lurching and crashing into every wall, door or piece of furniture on her way out. The vet tech had all he could do to steer her. They had left the surgical site un-bandaged and I received instructions to begin her on moderate exercise starting tomorrow in order to encourage what little skin there was to stretch and grow in. The doctor had done an incredible job stitching her back together. I wouldn’t have said it was possible given how little skin there was and how large a hole she had to work with.

We made it home. I attempted to clean up the murder scene but the carpet is not likely to survive. I let Blue out of his crate and he has spent the last 24 hours glued to my side. After a restless night, Bettina is actually weight bearing more and more today as the day has worn on. She’s going up and down the stairs on her own. When I came out into the living room and found Bettina plying her attentions to Blue’s breakfast bowl, licking and re-licking and licking it again to get every last molecule that she or Blue may have missed at breakfast-time, I knew that Beelzebettina is fully back. Having earned my first aid merit badge, I’m working on my sewing badge. I’ve got a Bettina-sized coat made out of bubble wrap almost complete.

Frankendog

I have seen a video where you are asked to watch a basketball being tossed around by 5 people standing in a circle. When the video ends they ask if you saw the bear. The what? You watch the video again, looking not for the basketball, but for the bear. Sure enough, a person in a bear suit walked through the middle of the circle of people. They passed the basketball around him. So how on earth could you not have noticed that the first time around? Some of you may also have seen this video. I believe it was part of a study conducted at some random University. Up to now, I have been extremely skeptical that the bear actually walked through the first video I watched. Until I had the unfortunate chance to repeat a modified version of this experiment.  

Bettina After We Returned From the Vet



A 2 inch blood red gash with a flap of skin hanging on the side of a black greyhound would seemingly be an easy thing to spot. After an afternoon of whining and general fussy pantsedness, I sent Bettina and Blue out to the backyard for an unscheduled potty break. I went back to my office to work and heard them galumphing about the backyard like a herd of stampeding water buffalos. Then I heard Bettina let out a bark/growl followed by silence. Parents of human children know that as soon as everything gets quiet, you must run, not walk, to see what everyone is up to. Which I did.

Bettina was standing in the backyard. At random intervals she would whip her head around to look at her side. She looked like she was tracking some pestering insect. I didn’t see anything immediately wrong so I called them in. I figured she must have hurt a leg or been stung by something. So I carefully checked her over for leg injury and insect bite. The skin tear had been on the side that was facing me the entire time but do you think I saw it? No. Instead, I didn’t see an insect bite or a leg injury of any kind. It wasn’t until I had turned away and then back again that I noticed that part of her was red that had never been red before (hmmm, watching the same video the second time?). 

Bettina After Two Weeks



Skin tears in greyhounds are not unusual at all. They have such thin skin with no fat. It doesn’t take much. It’s almost a rite of passage as a greyhound owner to wait atnthe vet’s while your hound is stitched up during an emergency visit. So you might imagine that this was not a major surprise for me. Having literally just finished the Red Cross’ book on canine first aid, you might also think I was pretty well prepared for how to handle this situation. I had watched the first aid DVD. I had beefed up my doggy first aid kit with all sorts of bandages, gauzes, cold packs and vet wrap.

If ever there was someone who was ready for this crisis, it was me. So the very first thing I did when I saw the skin tear was to panic. By-passing a whole bag full of bandages, tape and wraps, I ran to my own medicine cabinet and grabbed the most inappropriate thing I could see, an Ace bandage. I tried wrapping it around her middle section and adhering it in place using those little metal grabby thingies that come with the Ace bandage. Since greyhounds have such deep chests, the Ace bandage made it around one and a half times. Plus it was only 1 inch wide and thus, did not cover the entire tear.

Still, in my state of mind, this was a great improvised solution until I could get her to the vet. I got Blue into his crate, closing only one of the latches, grabbed my wallet and Bettina and I was out the door. I forgot to lock the door so I ran back to the house to double check that and when I did, it reminded me that I had neither my house key, nor my car key with me. I grabbed the keys and ran Bettina to the car. At that point, my brilliant Ace bandage triage had slid down, going from a chest wrap to a stylish, if bloody, belt. No time for repair though, THIS WAS AN EMERGENCY PEOPLE!


Bettina The Day Her Stitches Were Removed

  I managed to deliver Bettina to the vet in one piece. Her skin had gone from a 2 inch tear to a 3 inch tear in the course of our journey. They took her in and put about 12 sutures in her side. They handed me back a slightly worse for wear greyhound completely whacked out on the last of her anesthesia and on some apparently good pain meds. If she hadn’t been on leash, she would have floated away.

She peed all over herself and the back of the car on the way home. Then she peed all over the bed she was laying on in the living room. Got to love anesthesia. As soon as we got home, I recalled all the first aid prep I had just completed and the robust collection of medical supplies in my basement. Actually, I tripped over them while I was downstairs washing the bedding from the car and the living room.