weekend woes

This was going to be the weekend that i got things done!  I got up super early Saturday, i ran an easy 8.5 miles, picked up my veggie box, planned out meals for the week, baked zucchini-pineapple muffins (!?!?!)

And then committed myself to hanging around the home front this weekend and majorly cleaning the apartment.  We had Waffles spayed on Friday, so i wanted to hang around and make sure she was ok and monitor her.  


We were somewhat worried because her breed (Basenji) is super active - constantly running, jumping, and climbing.  The vet assured us she would be fine, and just to keep her relatively calm.  She seemed very confused as to why we weren't going on super long walks and we weren't aggressively playing with her like normal.  Aside from a few cries when she moved the wrong way, she had a voracious appetite, and was in good spirits.  We stayed in saturday night, and just as we were getting ready to head to bed, Matt noticed some blood on the blanket on the couch.  We rolled Waffles over, and she had somehow managed to open the entire length of the spay incision.  Gaping flesh wound on the abdomen of my dog.  I grabbed a towel, and we wrapped her in it, called the emergency vet (whom instructed us to come in obviously) Matt drove like a bat out of hell and we carried her into Vet ER where they took us into a room and examined the wound.


Luckily, it wasn't as bad as it looked.  (it looked pretty bad!  And Matt and i looked pretty bad as well carrying a dog in, wearing blood stained T-shirts!)  There are two layers of sutures in the spay procedure - the inner layer, which stitches up the muscle, and the outer layer which stitched up the fat and skin.  She only tore open the outer layer, thank god, so her internal organs were never exposed.  


There were able to stitch her up at the ER with a local anesthetic, but she started screaming while she was back there.  For a silent dog, she makes the most unbearable sound when she is in pain.  I just started crying when i heard it, my poor baby!  We were there for a couple hours before she was ready to go.  They gave her antibiotics and a cone to wear.  They later told me that she was a silent little angel the entire time they were stitching, and that all the screaming was from them putting the cone on.  She HATES it.

We went home and went to sleep, and my entire Sunday was spent hovering over her.  I am carrying her up and down the stairs every time she goes outside (strength-training?) and mostly letting her sleep in my lap.  She is incredibly mopey because of the cone - she keeps crashing into things, and is obviously disoriented.  We have to keep the cone on for 2 weeks!!  And now, the heavy duty sutures are making her itch!  I am terrified to leave her home alone because i don't want her to reopen the wound again.


The ER vet said we could try putting a little t-shirt on her, but that was a joke!

She just got all tangled in it trying to get it off, and i was worried she would do more damage than i was trying to prevent.  I'm mostly worried about what she might do while Matt and i are at work.  She is in her crate, AND wearing the cone, but i am still terrified that she might scratch the wound open, and create another emergency trip.  and at this point, i can't mentally or financially deal with that.  (we have spent well over $1,000 on her in the past week!!)


SO, that was my weekend.  Hopefully yours was not spent crying in a Vet ER?  Have you ever spayed a pet and had issues with them scratching the incision?  Have you ever seen an image so sad and so funny at the same time??