Poor Piper

Piper is in a cone.

When Schubert has to wear the cone, he goes from being a jolly, exuberant dog to being a morose, depressed dog. It is rather heartbreaking.

When Piper has to wear the cone, he goes from being a morose, depressed dog to being a slightly sadder morose, depressed dog. It is not quite as heartbreaking.

Also, he has strong drugs. This all happened on Friday, while Shawn and I were getting ready to go out and visit Shannon to hang thermal draperies over the drafty windows in her apartment.

Usually when Piper sees a suitcase, he freaks out and begs to be held from first-sighting until we exit the door. On Friday we packed openly, right in front of him. All he did was lie in the middle of the kitchen floor breathing heavily. As I said, strong drugs.

He ripped his dew claw loose. I do not know how this happened. All I know is, last Wednesday morning he and Schubert came downstairs for their breakfast and Schubert, bounder that he is, leaped around and bumped Piper, at which Piper let out the most distressing, blood curdling, extended yelp. I went to check and saw that he was limping around, favoring his left forepaw. At the time, I thought perhaps Schubert had caused some musculoskeletal injury to the Pipester. DJ had not left for college yet. He gently examined Piper and we decided to see if it got better.

Over Wednesday and Thursday, Piper huddled on the blanket on the sectional in the family room and whimpered. Shawn arrived home from a business trip on Thursday evening, and we discussed what to do. That night, Piper started obsessively licking his left forepaw, so I got out the cone (it seems to be a handy thing to keep around) and put it on his head.

On Friday I took him in to the vet. By then we had determined that it had something to do with the dew claw, but really, it didn't look all that bad. A tad swollen, is all. He cried like a human baby all the way to the vet's office, and I had a hard time choking back my own tears.

They surgically removed the dew claw with a local anesthetic, bandaged him, and gave him an antibiotic and a strong painkiller.

The bandaged paw.

I guess he will heal in about two weeks, or so they say. It's hard to get a picture of him, because whenever I get near him, the poor baby tries to climb into my lap.