Baxter's Latest Issues

Put down in writing what you are going to do and how the day is going to go, and inevitably it will all go pear-shaped. I got the first round of plants set out in the first and half of the second garden beds this morning before taking Baxter to the vet for his check-up. Turns out my Appointment wasn't until Thursday, but the vet saw me anyway and we were both glad I brought the B. in as he had an open wound on the elbow joint of the front leg on the dislocated hip side. It was a cankle (hygroma) gone bad. So the vet cleaned it out, checked the hip--it was still in the socket--and sent us home with a good prognosis. When we got home, Baxter went in the house and I went back to the garden for another hour. When I was done I put Jig and Gallifrey back in the house with Baxter and headed off to a two-hour meeting. And that's when the pear-shapedness occurred.

When I got home from my meeting I opened the front door to find all three dogs waiting for me in a very agitated state. Gallifrey was clearly all worked up and anxious, and Baxter had been the object of his anxiety. While I was gone, Gallifrey chewed through Baxter sling and opened the small sore on his dislocated leg into a gaping open wound with an exposed tendon, he had taken the bandage off the front leg and licked that wound into a raw state again, and he had finished by licking a hole in the the right front hygroma which had just been a bit swollen but not all an open wound. He had also licked his ears, a swollen area in his groin area (part of the initial accident trauma that had mostly subsided until Gallifrey started licking at it) and all over his back so that Baxter was soaking wet with slobber. When I opened the door, Baxter looked dazed and wet, and he was completely out of his sling. So off to the vet we went again.

An hour and a half later and Baxter has three serious bandages on three of his legs, he's out of the sling--they couldn't put it back on because it would put pressure on the back leg wound--and I have to keep him kenneled and pretty much immobile for the next two weeks, and I have to keep Gallifrey away from him. So there is a big kennel set up in our bedroom now, and it has one of the transmitters from the invisible fence on the top so when Gallifrey goes up to it--in case he could chew the bandages through the bars--he gets a correcting zap.

Now Baxter has had his nightly meds (we're up to four different ones), and I am ready to crash into my eyelids. He also got a new stuffed squirrel today s all seems to be okay with his world.Tomorow: more plant shopping and acquisition.