This was my little Stinky Monster waiting for food when we got home from the vet. All he wanted was something to eat, but I wasn’t supposed to give him anything for three hours.
They were three very long hours.
There is still some dried blood on his fur, but for only three days, I think he is healing nicely.
Toby was only supposed to go outside to go to the bathroom for two weeks, but he is having none of that. He is insisting on several walks a day.
I’m happy we had a sunny day so he could watch some “Dog TV”.
For the first two days, my boy was cranky, but now he seems to be feeling better.* He has even been playing with his toys again. I am grateful for these good times and hope we work things out so we can have many more.
*Right after I wrote this, he attacked me again. Looks like we have a lot of work still in front of us.
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Come see what Toby and Geordie like to do when they’re not recovering from surgery! Dream Our World is available from my shop at L Bowman Studios. Inside they view the world of art from a canine perspective and enjoy a day of unsupervised fun.
Toby had another one of his incidents, and family was bitten. I was told, “This dog needs to be put down.” Had it not been the weekend, Toby would likely be gone already. While I absolutely do not want to hurt my puppy, I find it difficult to justify working so hard to keep him with me.
Thinking that it might be my last hours with my boy, I wanted to spend every moment with him. I fed him everything good I had in the fridge. We played his favorite game – Tennis Balls. I took him for as many walks as he wanted. Toby made it harder on me by repeatedly telling me, “I love you. I love you.” (Having a talking dog is not always a good thing.). When I took him out to pee, he insisted on bringing his stuffed dragon with us. When he went to his kennel, he took his stuffed tiger with him and made his bed like he did when he was a tiny puppy organizing the polka-dotted blanket his breeder sent home with him. I cried so much, so hard, thinking of all the ways I had failed my boy I’m surprised I didn’t collapse into dust from dehydration.
For some reason my family thought it odd that I would mourn for the loss of my awful puppy. “But he’s terrible; you should get rid of him”. (True.) “Everyone’s afraid of him”. (I know.) “You could always get a new dog.” (It took me two years to find him! How likely is it that another dog would suddenly plop into my lap?).
In the evening, I took Toby to the church grounds. Even though God is everywhere, it is easier to think of Him hanging around there. I just stood with Toby and prayed the only prayer I could think of: “Help my boy. Help my boy. “
Monday morning I called the vet to discuss what happened and what she thought my options might be. I asked what she would do if he were her dog. Knowing tha Toby has a cyst that won’t heal and how pain reactive he is, she suggeted we go ahead and try surgery to excise the cyst. Perhaps removing the pain from his life might allow him to calm down enough to be able to train with him. She said the choice was mine, though, whether I wanted to destroy him or not.
Toby’s surgery is scheduled for Tuesday. I don’t know how I am going to make it through his recovery since he is so pain reactive. The vet recommended a basket muzzle that allows him to eat and drink. I have been looking into them, but I feel overwhelmed by the different choices and how you need to train your dog to wear one. There isn’t time to get Toby used to one before his surgery. If I put one on him, how long could I keep it on him? How long would he allow it to be on before he figured out how to take it off? I am trying to picture Toby with a cone, it is seems equally dangerous. (Well, for me, anyway.).
While I don’t know how this is going to work out, I am trusting that God will provide what we need at each step. For right now, I am grateful for the two additional days I’ve had with my little boy.
I know he’s scary and dangerous, but this is how I see him with my heart.
All year I have been saving the reward points that come with my credit card. I was hoping to consider those points Found Money spend them on a luxury – something I wanted but didn’t need. Last week I saw this decoration and thought, “I could give Christmas Puppy a family!! The cost is almost exactly the value of my points!”
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To his dismay, Christmas Puppy will have to continue being single, though, since in reality I will be putting those points toward Toby’s upcoming surgery.
I think Christmas Puppy would be have been more appreciative of my gift.
Of course he would be. I don’t want to have surgery!
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Information about ordering, sizes and pricing are available here at L Bowman Studios.
Yes, we’ve had another of “those” times. Toby was in pain without me realizing it, and the slightest brush against his fur turned him into Mr. Hyde.
Toby’s anger is explosive in these instances. He bites and thrashes and growls ferociously. In this state, he doesn’t recognize me. He doesn’t recognize his name. He doesn’t respond to commands. Normal Toby is adept at disentangling his paw from his leash, but Hyde Toby can’t reason that out. He just gets angrier and angrier until he lashes out and attacks the leash. As quickly as I could, I put Toby in his kennel and kept him there until I could take him to the vet in the morning.
It appears that what set Toby off was the cyst on his back. Of the two he started with, one healed nicely while the other lingered. The doctor drained and flushed the cyst again and sent us home with antibiotics, pain medication and Trazodone. I gave Toby the Trazodone for a few days but worried about him taking it for a prolonged period. He is very unsteady on his feet, and I swear I can hear him mumble “The colors…. the colors…” as he waves his paw in front of his nose.
I gave Toby sleepy pills for several days. When I finally stopped, it was as if he were a puppy again. He bounced around and played with toys. He asked to go outside, and when I took him he ran around with the zoomies for half an hour. When we came in, I could tell he still had energy to burn, so we went back out in the dark and played with tennis balls until he was so tired that I worried that he might hurt himself.
Thankfully my normal Toby seems to be back to inhabiting this terrier body. I don’t know who the monster was that had control for those four days, but I wish he would never come back. I’ve seen his face before. He is the one who controls the sleepwalking.
I talked to the vet about trying anti-anxiety medication on Toby. She said that Trazodone is for anxiety, but I didn’t like the way it affected him. She then suggested Gabapentin since it helps with both anxiety and pain. What Toby really needs, though, is an animal behaviorist to observe him and treat with both training and possibly medication.
Selfishly I wish that someone would watch my Toby and tell me, “Oh yes, he is a broken puppy. It’s not your fault he behaves this way”, but I doubt that will happen. Somehow, without meaning to, I have screwed up this little dog and made a dangerous mess of him.
Toby and I had a misadventure a couple of weeks ago. While on a walk, two large dogs woofed at Toby and scared him so badly that he bolted. He pulled me hard enough to knock me down and flip me over. I was stunned, and it took a few seconds for me to be able to move. In that time my little stinker pulled the leash off my wrist and ran away.
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I landed hard on both hands and both knees. My knees were torn and bruised even through my clothes. This was one hand after cleaning out the abrasions. (I left a nice trail of blood along the way home.)
Unlike the last time I fell, kind people stopped to check on me while others went after Toby. He was so scared that he was over a quarter of a mile away – heading home as fast as his little terrier legs could carry him – before someone caught him.
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I wasn’t scared. I was just being prudent.
Very rapidly.
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Toby has always been a scaredy boy, but he was calmer and more willing to try new things when Geordie was with him. Human children may have security blankets, but Toby had a Security Geordie. I wonder sometimes if he might not be such an emotional mess if he still had a canine buddy.
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Come see how much braver Toby is when he is with this big brother Geordie as they visit the Museum of the Imagination. In Dream Our World they view the world of art from a canine perspective while enjoying a day of unsupervised fun.
Its not my fault for noticing your lousy housekeeping skills.
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The Adventures of Bitey Dog 