Tag: itch

Dakota takes a turn

Ok, the Woman is not a dog but she is my mom. I thought she liked me. I like her. But she humiliated me. She wrote a silly thing about making me wear that awful pink thing and then she put pictures here so you could all see how goofy and feminine I look in a pink thing. That is humiliating. So I took over. At least for now. I read how to change the name on the account and put my name on it. It is now Dakota Dawg’s blog. I am Dakota Dawg, and I do not wear pink!

I would like to address Mom’s concerns. First of all–yes, the damn thing itches like crazy. It drives me bananas. If I could take a stick and rub it all over the sore place, I would. It hurts when I lick it, but it feels good, too. I don’t know which to pay attention to, the hurting when I lick it or the itching when I don’t. Mom doesn’t have any idea how awful it feels. She says it will stop itching soon. I don’t know if I can trust her anymore.

And no, I wasn’t being naughty. I was being a dog. Or a dawg, even. I am a wild animal, a creature of nature, and I shouldn’t have to answer to anyone but myself. I know who I am and what I deserve. I deserve to feel better, I deserve to run around wherever I want and pee on anything I feel like. I deserve to bark at whatever time I want to bark. I deserve to have that big pillow on the left side of my bed, and I deserve to have my supper at 4 p.m. sharp. Mom’s getting better about that last part.

This morning I sat on the driveway while Mom did the heavy lifting. I watched her bring in firewood. I was wearing the silly pink shirt thing. I can’t figure out how to get it off. But she did the hard work and I thought about licking my butt. I learned how to prop up against a wall to make it look even lazier. I tried to make it look good. The neighbor’s dogs were mouthing off again and I growled. I haven’t felt like growling for a couple of weeks, but today I did. I thought about running off into the woods and kicking their butts, but I remembered I was doing a study in laziness so I stayed propped against the wall. And growled. And honestly, I also remembered that I was wearing a pink thing and knew I could never let them see me like that.

I found the pictures Mom took of me in the pink thing. The worst part was being betrayed by Evelyn. She just sat there with me and didn’t care that I had to wear her clothes–girl clothes. She laughed at me after Mom put us to bed. She is the worst roommate in the whole world. See? She didn’t help me at all. My eyes are pleading for help and she didn’t care.

Evelyn was useless when Mom put the pink thing on me. I was very disappointed.

I’m not sure if I will lock Mom out of this blog permanently. I have to think about it. She really ticked me off. She has let strangers cut off several parts of my body that were pretty important to me and then wounded my dignity. I’m gonna take a nap and sleep on it. I’ll get back to you.

Dakota is naughty

Dakota’s incision must be itching something fierce because last night he started licking it through the shirt he’s been wearing, saturating the shirt. He managed to pull the shirt-tail up and lick the lower part of the incision. He even opened up a little gap, and it started bleeding slightly. The surrounding skin was red and splotchy. Overall, it did not look so great and he would not leave it alone. Because I’d changed his shirts every time he got them wet, I ran out of things to put on him. And I needed something that would be impossible for him to pull up. (I’d even safety-pinned the shirt-tails snugly around him.) The only thing left to put on him was Evelyn’s stylish pink fleece. It even has a hood.

Dakota seemed unhappy about this change of wardrobe, but I thought he was kind of cute. Pink isn’t really his color, but maybe he’ll stop licking that incision and opening it up!

Stitches out, fighting with the roommate; it’s a normal day!

Seroma, day 10 (not too big)

Today is day 10 for Dakota and we celebrated by getting his stitches removed. I wanted to wait a couple of days more, but Dakota had been going to town trying to scratch the awful itch they created, and I wanted to have that abdominal bruising looked at. Turns out day 10 is perfectly fine for suture removal and everything had closed up nicely.

Dakota does have a smallish seroma, which I suspected, but it isn’t large enough to require any treatment. After the stitches were out, there was some fluid oozing in one reddened area so I think it may find its own drain. Sounds nasty, doesn’t it? A couple of days ago Dakota did begin licking the incision and irritated a spot, and this is where the oozing is coming form.

The bruising is ok, although of course no one will commit to saying it’s actually from the surgery. There have been all kinds of caveats issued: It could be a platelet disorder that only last week manifested; it could be internal bleeding from who knows what that just popped up…I don’t think so.

After we got back home, Dakota’s bulldog Evelyn (the worst roommate in the world, remember) tried to snag a bone from his mouth. Evelyn had been left home with at least 5 bones while we were gone, but once we got home the only one she couldn’t live without was the one Dakota picked up. They really went at it for a moment, and I had to intervene. All I could envision was Dakota’s shoulder tearing open and everything falling apart. It was really rather frightening. In retrospect, Dakota now cares if Evelyn wants to steal from him. Several days ago he would probably not have lifted his head to protest.

So the mending continues and I’m hopeful that Dakota will regain more strength every day. He is doing much better outside, avoiding obstacles and not falling down. The worst navigation challenges come from his persistent running into people, especially me. He often doesn’t seem to know what to do with his body and just rams right into my legs. I think he wants me to move out of his way, but I just can’t always do that. He also needs to learn to moderate his speed. I understand why faster is easier for him, but boy is it fast! I’m very sure he can slow down a bit and still keep up good momentum.

Now the challenge will be to keep Dakota quiet for another week so the seroma can resolve. Oh yeah, and he absolutely can’t keep licking at the incision, either. I guess he’s still going to be modeling some tasteful duds for the next week or so.