A Trip to the Vet, Again

We had some trauma in our house last night...  I was ushering Argos up the stairs when suddenly he fell down about three steps, crashed into me, and I noticed blood everywhere.  I was completely freaked out about it, but stayed pretty calm - I slowly backed back down the stairs, helping him come back down as well, and keeping him from slipping in the blood.

Then I checked him all over to see what the heck had just happened...  and as it turns out, he somehow ripped his dewclaw out on one of his front paws!  Ow ow ow!  I got him to come out into the living room, and then proceeded to create a bloody, sodden pile of paper towels as I tried to stop the bleeding.  I was home alone at the time, so called my husband and asked him to come home, and to stop and get some more bandages on his way back.  And of course told him what was going on.

He was with a group of people - and as it turns out, a friend of a friend that was there just so happens to be a veterinarian!  So he told the guy what was going on, and he confirmed that I was doing the most important part, which was to stop the bleeding.  But he said after that we could probably safely just wrap his paw in bandages for the night, but to take him to the vet the next day to check it out, make sure that there wasn't any shards left, and to get him on an antibiotic to prevent infection.

By the time Jeff got home, I'd gotten the bleeding to stop, though the carnage was still all over the house.  So we put a little ointment on the wound, put a bandaid on that, and then wrapped his leg.

Argos kept fussing with the bandages, and we quickly realized that if left to his own devices, he was going to eat them in the night.  So...  we didn't leave him to his own devices.  There's no way that an injured greyhound could sleep on our bed with both of us, so I let him sleep beside me on the guest room bed all night.   I am an incredibly light sleeper, and could wake up if he started chewing on the bandages and make him stop.  (He was pretty good - I only had to wake up and stop him a couple of times.)  It was a long night, all the same, mostly because I was lying there worried about him.  Those questions that float through your mind sometimes...  I was questioning whether we should have taken him to the emergency vet, whether his paw was going to get infected, whether I was at fault for letting his dewclaws get too long  (as it is, they weren't - the vet confirmed this the next day) and OMG he is going to have to have his entire foot amputated and it is going to be all my fault!!!  Yeah, I have a little bit of a problem with anxiety sometimes.

I HAD to go to work today, because I took two days off earlier this week due to not feeling well myself. So Jeff got the task of taking him in.  They had to lightly sedate him in order to work with his paw at all...  as it turns out, if one has to rip out one's dewclaw, one might consider doing it just like Argos did - it was a completely clean tear, with no bits left inside.  So there's no reason that it can't reheal.  They also told Jeff that I'd done a good job in getting the bleeding stopped...  I'm guessing that means that the bandage wasn't bloody, and that there wasn't anything congealed in the wound.  So they gave us some antibiotics for him, and sent him home.

He is not a happy camper tonight...  he's still kind of sluggish from the sedatives, and is probably in quite a bit of pain.  He has refused to eat his kibble, or even his favorite snack - a milkbone.  I did scramble him some eggs, which he more than happily ate, so I think that the crunchy stuff just takes too much effort right now.  We slipped his first dose of antibiotic into the eggs, so that's taken care of.

Poor lovey.  I'm sure that he is in a lot of pain as well.  I've never seen him so subdued...  hoping to see more of his regular personality tomorrow.  I got the faintest glimpse of it tonight.  After I made him the first egg, and he so enthusiastically gobbled it up, I went back into the kitchen to make him another one.  He got down off of the couch and trotted into the kitchen after me, eyes bright and wide, hoping for more food.  It was just for a moment, and he didn't eat all of the second egg, but it was something.

For now he's on the couch at my feet, dozing.

Send good thoughts his way.  I know that his malady is a minor one compared to what some doggies have to put up with, but he (and Jeff and I) are thoroughly traumatized by all of this, and need all of the good thoughts that we can get!