I was *supposed to be working from home today since I had a doc appt. That went … not so well. First there were TVs to move around (they need to go to recycling). Then I had the bright idea to trim Matty’s toenails. I cut Val’s for years with nary an issue. Not sure how it happened but on the very first one something slipped or she kicked or something and it went into the quick and started bleeding like mad. She didn’t yelp or anything, but it must have hurt. If you’re not a dog person, you may not know that dog nail wounds bleed like crazy and are really hard to get stopped. And of course, after years of doing it, I was “riding without a helmet” and didn’t have any styptic in the house. So we spent literally hours getting the bleeding stopped, then she’d lick it, then it would start again … blood on the carpets, floors, all over. Finally we put the no-lick cone on her and that was a big mistake … she totally freaked and kept re-opening her nail by dancing around to fight the cone. Then I hit upon putting gauze in a sock and putting the sock on her, then duct taping it around her knee (on the sock not her fur) so it wouldn’t come off. Presto, the cone came off and she didn’t chew on it, just licked it. She looked hilarious tromping around in a floppy sock. Finally tonight I hit on duct taping the nail itself to protect just the wound without her realizing anything was on her foot at all. She just got that off apparently so who knows what we’ll try now. Maybe back to the sock. At least the duct tape works to go outside. The sock isn’t so great for that.
The poor thing is such a compliant and thankful patient I almost had to cut my own fingertip off in penitence. Gawd. What an awful feeling.
The other thing we realized, belatedly, is that we expect to have to cut nails every few weeks but Matty is getting so much walking and playing that they are wearing down on their own. Which is good, overall.
