Tonight I am grateful for the return of my friend, Honor. Honor is my four-legged companion who a little over three weeks ago suffered a small but costly injury when she was attacked by another dog. My sister and brother-in-law bore the brunt of the financial expense, for which I am grateful because I could not have afforded the cost of her care. The emotional costs to Honor, me, and my sister and brother-in-law (the attack happened at their house) have also been burdensome. The attack was brief but vicious: a previously friendly dog who’d been staying at my sister’s house while her human was away suddenly snapped at Honor and in an instant had torn the lower part of Honor’s ear off. I told the full story of the calamity a few weeks ago in the blog for Day 718, so I won’t recount it here. Suffice it to say that the road to recovery has been slow but steady.
Initially Honor wore only the “cone of shame,” (the translucent plastic collar so dubbed in the movie “Up”) to keep her from scratching her ear and disturbing the bandage (which was stapled to her head…) But even though she could not scratch, she shook her head so frequently and vigorously, trying to shake loose the uncomfortable bandaging that she aggravated the injury. When she went for a bandage change a few days later, the vet decided to wrap her head in a sort of cloth hood that nearly covered her entire head. It immobilized both her ears, which while no doubt good for allowing her injured ear to heal made her completely miserable.
"Sister Mary Honor" in her old school habit.
For two weeks she wore the combination of the hood and the cone of shame–she reminded me of an nun in an old-fashioned habit they wore when I was in Catholic school as a child. I removed the C.O.S. when I fed her and took her outside to do her business (it’s nearly impossible to smell the grass and telephone poles with that big cone on and virtually impossible to reach her food and water bowls), but never removed the hood. It is safe to say that for nearly a fortnight I had a very depressed dog on my hands. I took her to work with me for a few days so she would not feel totally wretched, and so I could keep an eye on her and comfort her as needed Even with the cone off she felt awkward and uncomfortable in her hoodie, and I couldn’t interest her in any of her favorite her toys.
Finally, on last Wednesday she went back to the vet to have her sutures removed and check on her progress. My brother-in-law picked her up for me as he had all four return visits to the animal hospital. When I went to pick her up from the house I saw that the vet had removed the hoodie, but Honor still had to wear the cone. It was the first look I got at the ear itself and I was startled by the size of the chunk taken out of it. Still, I could tell she was glad to be liberated from the awful hood and I was glad to get her home. For the next few days I put the cone back on her only overnight or while I was at work: times when I couldn’t watch her and worried that she’d scratch the scab off and aggravate the wound. Then last Sunday I knew my pup was on her way back to being herself–for the first time since the awful incident three weeks earlier, she was fully interested in running after and retrieving the tennis ball. I can’t tell you how glad I was to have her back: excited, wildly enthusiastic, and funny.
Honnie the Beautiful, July 24, 2013
I am so grateful to have the presence of my four-legged friend in my life. She continues to be a model for me of unconditional love, boundless enthusiasm, and joie de vivre, even in the aftermath of a scary attack and the subsequent discomfort of the various apparatuses she was forced to wear. Today as she gleefully ran down the tennis ball toss after toss, trotting back with it in her mouth, making me try to shake it loose from her so I could toss it again, I was reminded of just how much my little companion means to me. I am glad she’s back and grateful to my sister and brother-in-law, the vets and technicians at the hospital, and everyone who had a hand in helping her to heal physically and emotionally. For the manner in which this has all turned out, I remain most deeply grateful.
