Eo’s main problem with this surgery is that she’s been licking a certain part of it, to the point where the dissolving sutures have given out and the wound almost got infected. The lampshade-style collars have been useless — she either figures out a way around it, or figures out how to get it off … methods for the latter include destroying it and tearing it into little pieces so that it can never be worn again.
But I finally managed to beat her drive to lick! It only took me two weeks to outsmart my dog.
Step 1- Get a “nonstick dressing for covering wounds” from your local pharmacy or grocery store. The pads I had on hand were about 2 inches by 3 inches. Step 2- Attach it to the dog. I used white medical tape. It doesn’t stick too well, but well enough for our purposes - we’re not trying to seal it off, we’re just trying to cover it. Step 3 - Spray the outside of the bandage with Grannick’s Bitter Apple. It’s a spray solution that I imagine tastes and smells horrible to a dog .. I can’t smell it, though, so I don’t mind! Be careful not to get any Bitter Apple in the wound itself or in the dog’s nose or eyes.
So far she’s left it alone. I’m sure if I put her in her kennel the smell would drive her nuts and she’d tear it off out of frustration, but in the meantime we’re good to go. And hopefully a few days of keeping this covered and smelling/tasting horrible will finally allow things to close up.
Eo’s favorite treat is also something that she can chew on. In fact, her favorite treat happens to be bones and rawhides.
For rawhides, I’ve found that grocery store brands are sometimes the best. The rawhide from HEB grocers (Hill Country Fare brand) are much better than the ones you get at PetCo / PetSmart — thicker, more tightly rolled, and at $8/bag the’re literally half the price of the ones at PetSmart.
For bones, it’s important that you do NOT buy cooked bones from the grocery store for your dogs. Ask at the meat counter for RAW BONES WITH MEAT STILL ON THEM. Cooked bones are a danger to your dog because they will splinter as the dog chews on them, and the splinters are sharp like little knives — as they make their way through your dog’s digestive system, they’ll make little cuts. Would you feed your dog a handful of little knives? I didn’t think so! Uncooked bones are so much safer and you should be able to buy them by the pound from your butcher.
Eowyn’s been healing up over the past week. It’s kind of tough for her — she’s become the whiniest dog ever because I won’t let her run around and play — but she’s surviving, and her incision is healing relatively well.
The only upset was this morning. I woke up to the sound of licking, and even though she had her lampshade collar on, she had managed to move it on her neck so that her mouth was long enough to get to the wound — and she’d licked it open. Off to the vet clinic we go! We were lucky that they had a lull right at noon where they could stitch her back up with metal stitches.
I purchased an Everlasting Treat Ball (comes with one treat) today at PetSmart for Eowyn. Unfortunately, this product doesn’t live up to it’s name.
The Everlasting Treat Ball is a soft blue jelly-like item that you can slip an “everlasting treat” into. The everlasting treats are about the size of clay pigeons and are made up of edible, digestable stuff that’s fairly hard — think an edible Nylabone or a Greenie or something of that nature.
Eowyn sniffed the treat and loved it. Unfortunately, she figured out in under a minute that if she chewed on the holder the long way, the treat would pop out and she could chew on it directly. So that I could fully review it, I purchased two ‘refills’ for the top of the ball, and since you can put two in at a time, I did so to see if she could get THEM out too. Bad news — it’s far too easy for a smart dog.
My advice: Just get the fillers themselves, and skip the holder ball.