Tuesday, November 16, 2004

So I went home on Friday. Right after I wrote the last post. hee. I also took Monday off. I'm taking tomorrow off. I'm at work today. What a hard worker I am! I better get a raise!


As you know, mom and dad are in town. We had such a fun weekend, once we sorted out the dog-ear business. It was so icky that I just have to share it with you.


I went home Friday and was sitting with Daisy, feeling sorry for her, and decided that I should get her ear wound all cleaned up before the vet visit because they would probably try to shave her head or something ridiculous if the wound looked messy. They love to shave animals. Then the animal looks like a rabid squirrel or like it has mange or something equally nasty.


Anyway, so I took some peroxide and cottonballs (and yes, a flashlight) and started cleaning off the black nickel-sized scab under her ear. It wiped away to reveal... pink doggie skin. There was no wound there. Hmmmmm. Then I lifted up her floppy blonde doggie ear and there I found something from an eopisode of the X-files, from the season right before they made that movie. Black sludge was oozing from her ear onto her fur, causing some irritation. Luckily, I recognized this symptom because I have one shape-shifting alien dog already-- Goofch sometimes gets yeast infections in his ear. They come from a little bit of water in the ear (usually because of a bath or swimming) combined with having big flooppy doggie ears that don't let air flow in and out freely. It's also characterized by a distinctive yeasty smell. Yes, you really DID need to know that.


The only way to know for sure, though, was to clean out the sludge, stab the dog in the back of the neck with a sharp alien-killing device, and see whether she bled green toxic ooze. OR, clean out the ear thoroughly with more peroxide. OK, you must know this-- I could hear the ear canal clearing. Aaaaah, aren't you glad you know this now? Daisy was visibly relieved. She started shaking her head, shake-shake-shake-shake-shake. She made happy grumbly noises when I cleaned out some more. Then I grabbed the doggie lamisil and voila! She no longer has that not-so-fresh-feeling. In fact, within about 10 minutes, she was entirely restored to her normal hyper-active-jumping-in-your-face self.


The quiet Daisy was kind of nice. We considered filling up her ear with vaseline for the rest of the weekend. Instead we took her for a very long walk in the park on Sunday. She was joyful. Even moreso because Dianaverse picked her up last night to take her home.


So we're having a fantastic time with my folks- hiking, biking, eating, reading newspapers from Diana's front yard, watching DVDs, you know, all that fun stuff you do when people come to town and you have no cable TV.

1 comment:

PartnerInCrime said...

Lordy, that is foul. I don't think I can ever complain about cleaning up one of my cat's hairballs again, it seems so mild by comparison to your science fiction-esque experience. Ugh.