Coney Island

Our poor little dog has been through hell recently. He got hurt in France crashing through some dry bushes around the first of July and had a pretty bad wound at the base of his tail, or more correctly put, at the base of his stub. He licked it before we got home to our vet and by then it had abcessed. Oral antibiotics did not touch this wound, and it has been off and on pouring pus for 3 months now. He's spent way more than his fair share of time in a cone, and in the last 2 weeks the vet has been coming every day (thank goodness she lives 1 minute from us) and irrigating the wound with powerful antibiotics. It was looking better every day, but yesterday the irrigation seemed to really hurt at the opening of the wound, and this morning even though the wound was closed it was red and swollen and just angry looking and seemed to hurt worse than ever. Our vet Yvi took a look at it and was not happy. She said it looked like a hematoma which came out of nowhere. So she opened it up, flushed and squeezed and there was no pus but it just all looked awful. Yvi and I were both just pretty depressed. After she was finished and Uben had a treat (never has there been a dog so cooperative with this daily irrigation...he's just been amazing) I asked him to come back and sit in my lap so I could see the wound. His butt was more toward Yvi and she squeezed and felt the wound once more, and then suddenly her expression changed and she said in an excited way, "It's coming, It's coming!!!" and out came the source of all the problems of the last 3 months, a nasty old thorn. I almost started to cry just in relief. Now we think the wound has some hope of actually healing, and little Uben soon will not have to put up with daily assaults on his butt. He seems to know Yvi is trying to help him, and as soon as it is over every day he is all over her licking her and jumping on her. His daily message to Yvi is "Don't hurt me, owww that hurts, ok I still love you." It was looking like little Ubes was headed for the operating room, but thankfully we think maybe just maybe it won't be necessary. He's back in a cone for a few more days until the wound closes again, and so his name this week is Coney Island. Note the duct tape on the cone....this is from wear and tear in the past couple of months, and no cone ever slowed my dog down in a corn field! He came out one night with the cone totally torn apart, thus the duct tape. Yvi, thank you for all you did to try to fix this wound and for never giving up. Please don't send us a bill ha ha ha.