Our little escape artist

It's been a few days since Gromit's paw incident and he seems to be doing much better. He's putting weight on his foot and is acting a little less lethargic now that his pain killer doses are decreasing. He was doing so well that late Monday afternoon I decided that I could run to the grocery store really quick and leave G at home.

I was gone for about an hour and when I got home I found a happy dog who had removed the bandages from his foot and was licking his stitches. Ack! I dropped the groceries and scooped him up and ran to get my first aid supplies to re-cover the foot.

Please excuse the quality of the photos since they were taken with my cell phone. I was the easiest thing to grab.

The after hours vet clinic told me that it would be ok to leave his foot unwrapped since we had a vet appointment the next day to assess his foot - as long as he didn't lick it anymore. They suggested we purchase an e-collar (cone) so we could be sure he wouldn't get at his foot when we weren't looking. So when Dave got home from work (because I wasn't going to leave G unattended again) we headed out to get G a cone.

I thought that I should also lightly cover his foot because it looked like it was still oozing and bleeding just a little bit and it would be safer to have it covered while we were out and while we were sleeping. This is my poorly done, make-shift foot wrap. It looks like I don't have a future in veterinary medicine.

Monday night we put G in the cone, wrapped his foot, and went to bed. I woke up every hour or so to check on G because I was so worried about him. Everything was fine until my alarm went off at 5:00 a.m. so I could give G another dose of pain killers. I got up and looked around and couldn't find him anywhere. I turned on the bedroom light to see that he had backed himself under our bed to catch the cone between the bed frame and the floor and slid out of the cone. On the other side of the bed was my bandage that he (again) pulled off his foot. I found G under the bed. We had a little escape artist on our hands!

Clearly this dog is too smart for his own good.

So I re-wrapped his foot, gave him his pain killers and brought him into bed with me so I could keep better track of him. We slept there together until 9:00 a.m.

I kept him with me all day Tuesday until we went to the vet. The vet said that I now needed to leave the bandages off so his foot could air out (except when he goes outside - I need to cover it then) and helped me to better secure the cone to G's collar so he couldn't slip out of it anymore.

He now has to wear the cone any time that I can't be right next to him and when we go to bed at night. G is NOT thrilled. Can you tell?

He hates the cone so much that when it is on him he just sits there and gives me the "I hate you" glare or pouts with his head down. He won't lie down unless I'm holding him or walk unless I'm walking right next to him. Let's just say this makes sleeping and going outside to potty very interesting.

The stitches will come out late next week so let's hope we can all make it through until then.

Hang in there, Little Guy!