Zack The Wonderdog - Stitches, Take Two

A week ago Thursday, I received a call from my dog trainer, Andy, who had current custody of Zack and Zanna the Wonderdogs while I was traveling.

Andy and Zack had been hunting, and Zack went after a felled chukkar.  When he retrieved it to hand, Andy noticed that there was quite a bit of blood.  He examined the bird, and then looked at Zack.

Zack had somehow sliced his leg, down the front, just above the wrist of his paw.  He even sliced into the muscle.  We don’t know if he hit a mesquite thorn, some barbed wire, or just a sharp branch.  But slice it, he did.  He layed that sucker open.  Andy rushed Zack to the vet in Big Spring.  The vet sedated Zack, and stitched up muscle and skin.  My sweet dogsitter Casey drove to Big Spring and picked Zack up, brought him home, and gave him sweet loving care until I could fly home.

We’ve kept him quiet, no walks around the neighborhood, no climbing trees, and he’s been grounded from the dog park.  We had to give that muscle time to heal.  He's been such a good dog, dealing with his quiet time with grace (and good drugs!).

Today at lunch, I took Zack to my local vet to get the stitches out.  I was pleased to see that Zack’s hair was growing back full and the incision was straight and clean.  My vet took out the stitches.  I asked about rebandaging the wound, but doc decided that since the incision had healed and hair was growing back, to leave it unbandaged.  He thought Zack would leave it alone.

Casey went by the house to check on Zack this afternoon, and this is what she found.

She texted me this picture, then called me immediately,  more than a little upset and panicked.  I called the vet to let them know we were en route, and asked Casey to load Zack and meet me at the vet’s office.  How did this happen?  We should have bandaged his leg  back up.  Zack was doing what any dog will do -  self-healing by licking, and broke the incision wide open again.

So our darling Zack spends another night at the vet, post surgery, and tomorrow, we’ll start this process all over again.  We will bandage post-stitch removal, I promise.

Pray for our sweet Wonderdog, will you?  He told* me today he’d rather be hunting than taking all these antibiotics and pain pills.  And though he likes the cool colors of VetWrap, he’d rather be au naturel. Because he's gorgeous without VetWrap, "don't ya know, Mom? I don't need any decoration."

I told him to quit licking his wounds - they’d heal a lot quicker if he did it our way.

He looked at me with that “Oh, Mom, puh-lease” look.

*Yes, my dogs talk.  Don't yours?