At one point or another, pretty much every pet around here has been stuck in a cone for one reason or another. Teak had nose surgery to open her little nares – a common procedure for pugs so that they can, you know, breathe better. She still somehow managed to flip Dyson’s ear over the cone and ram her face in and lick inside his ear. He is such a tolerant animal. Dyson had to wear a cone for weeks when he first came to live here, courtesy of the botched neuter. Do you know what a scrotal hematoma is? Because we do, and Dyson does, and it sucks big time! Poor guy – he didn’t seem to mind though and just rammed his way through doors and into crates. He eventually learned to use his cone as a toy, and would scoop up tennis balls and roll them around inside the cone. Hysterical, but you had to be there.
Jester had his cone joy last summer, when he somehow managed to poke a hole in his eyeball – that was fun. It is, of course, impossible to sleep under the covers with a cone on your head, although he tried. Poor little man. The latest, and current, cone head is Karma. Oh the sadness. Karma somehow injured a toenail, and we are battling some sort of evil infection. The vet isn’t sure if the toe is cracked, has a bone infection, or what – we are waiting on results from the radiologist for more information. So for now, she has to have her foot soaked in epsom salts – oh painful, evil epsom salts, WITH THE WATER THAT KILLS COLLIES – and we keep it wrapped during the day to support the joint. And since Karma is gifted at ripping wraps off the nano second you are not looking, she gets to wear a cone.
It is heavy for the little collie, and flattens the hair on top of her head. The first day she wore it she had a breakdown and could not figure out why she couldn’t kiss me through the plastic. Then she got in Dyson’s way and he wagged his tail against the cone and beat her head into the sides of it. It took her a while to actually move. She is not graceful with it, and when saying hello, she’s downright dangerous. Can’t lift her head high enough to get on the couch, and dear heaven’s the drama of trying to get in her crate for dinner. She literally bashed herself into the door three times before she heard me telling her to just “lie down!” I fed her on the floor and closed the crate so we wouldn’t repeat that fiasco.
Having animals means caring for them, in sickness and in health. But caring for them can also mean laughing your ass off at them while they try to navigate the world with a plastic dish on their head.
Posted on September 11th, 2008 by michelle
Filed under: My dogs, Random run ins
Oh, you make me laugh so hard!!!
Jada the poo-eater learned how to use her cone as a shovel. Scoop, toss and eat. Nasty!
She had to wear her cone for 6 weeks due to a gash in her side… unknown reasons.
She never learned how to walk through a door or go through a hallway without banging into every inch of wall, doorways, and hallways (really funny watching her try to turn around in the hall). I’m sorry , it was a riot.
When I first go her back from the vet…she was a tiny bit groggy. she tried to walk throught the door and just couldn’t get through it. She bumped the wall and stopped. period. I got her home, she walked straight into a wall face first, and stopped. She just stood there, cone to the wall…….or a really long time. So, I laughed at her stoned self. I couldn’t help it.