Shibas With Cones

Last week, I had the most horrible sinus infection.  I'm not entirely sure it has gone away, but it couldn't possibly get any worse than last week without my face exploding.  I was constantly torn between taking this generic sinus decongestant/pain reliever that makes me really spacey, or just trying to tough it out at work.  I'm still not sure which was worse, putting all of my concentration into remembering to think, or putting all of my concentration into pretending the pressure and pain behind my cheekbones wasn't threatening to lay me out.

I forget things at work enough as it is, but the day I took the generic green sinus pills, at one point Dr. W asked me why I was staring at a fecal flotation that was running and I honestly couldn't tell her.  I wasn't thinking about anything at all. My mind was just blank.  I was literally in the middle of talking to her about something and then stopped to stare at this poo test on the counter and just went away.  It's not like this stuff has codeine in it or anything.  It's 325 mg of acetaminophen and 5 mg of phenylephrine HCl.  I don't understand why it does that to me, but there you have it.

I would have gotten back to blogging last week if it hadn't been for said sinus infection.

Wednesday was the worst day.  I'm thinking it had something to do with the barometric pressure and the snowstorms we've had blowing through my area recently.  Whatever the reason, Wednesday really popped me good.  I was much better Thursday, and then Friday it started back up again with a vengeance.

By Friday afternoon, I was REALLY glad to be getting off of work and looking forward to getting everyone home, Kitsune walked and fed, and begging my SO to let me pass out again, like he angelically let me do Wednesday.

I got Kitsune out for his late afternoon/early evening poop walk.  He seemed to be straining a little bit, and then squealed as he passed the feces.  Then he snapped his head around to inspect his back end as if it had bitten him or something.  When he turned so that his rear was facing me, I noticed blood on his butt.

Great.

On Sunday, I had expressed his anal glands, to my delight.  (Hey, it's the first time I've ever done it.  I knew the theory of it, I'd just never actually done it before.  I was all kinds of proud of myself.)  I saw him dragging his butt on the ground and knew it had to be done, but I also knew that we had no openings at work the coming week and I wasn't about to drag him over to the specialty center just to have someone express his anal glands for me.  It was me or nothing.

Now, I've never had a dog that needed anal glands to be expressed.  Kitsune is my first.  (He would be.)  Really only the left side was full, the right was fine.

After the deed had been done, he didn't go flop bott anymore, but apparently the episode had widened his licking horizons.  Previously, he had given himself small lick granulomas on the outside of one of his back paws, and the inside of both front paws.

Friday he must have spent all day trying to give himself one on his butt, because after I'd called work and apologized profusely for interrupting their break, explained the situation, and was told to come in, Dr. W stuck her fingers up my dog's butt and declared that neither glands were abscessed, impacted, or had weird drainage.  His butt was just raw.  We were sent home with some steroidal ointment and a cone to prevent unwanted attentions to the area.

After our experiences with the Gentle Leader, I wasn't looking forward to putting an e-collar on Kitsune.  I anticipated a wrestling match to get it on, and then hours of Kitsune trying (and probably sometimes succeeding) in removing it.  Instead, I got this:





After that, Kitsune pretty much gave up on the idea of getting the cone off, and went back into my bedroom to lay in a pile of my dirty laundry and sulk.  While sulking, he wouldn't even pick his head up to look at me when I spoke to him.  He'd glance at me, but acted as though he'd decided to just lay down and die.  After about two hours of that, he couldn't take it anymore and got up.  He seemed to decide to just act like the cone wasn't there, which was interesting as he went crashing and bashing through the house.

By Sunday afternoon I'd decided that the crashing and bashing was deliberate.  Kitsune seemed to be taking every available opportunity to smash the ends of the cone into things.  A sneaking suspicion that he's smart enough to know that with enough smashing eventually it will break crossed my mind.

This evening, I caught him licking his butt.  With the e-collar on, he had figured out how to lick his butt.  Oh, the determination of Shibas.