Thursday, November 7, 2013

Ah FarmDog...

FarmDog has always had a bit of a licking.. issue. Mostly she'd lick her paws for a while, usually while I was trying to sleep. 

In recent years, as she's gotten older and stiffer, it's gotten worse. As the weather gets cold, she gets achey, which only encourages her licking. So she'll lick sores on herself. 

Not a huge deal, glucosamine helps and when she does manage to do it in spite of everyone telling her to stop licking (which she does... for a bit) I just throw some triple antibiotic on it, wrap it in gauze, and then vet wrap.

Usually she'll lick the vet wrap until told not to but mostly she leaves it alone aside from being pouty and showing you her ouchy for sympathy at every chance. Occasionally she'll take the vet wrap off to get to it but she knows it's only temporary and she'll get wrapped again as soon as I see it.

Yesterday she tried to be sneaky:



She chewed the bottom off the vet wrap, leaving most of it intact, so that she could get to the sore. Of course she got re-wrapped, but I had to get a picture first. She did a pretty good job of making it inconspicuous, honestly.

Edited to Add:  Do you see this sad face? You see how injured she is? She's showing you how injured she is.



3 comments:

Old NFO said...

Poor pup...

Jennifer said...

Awe. She needs extra head scratches

Kathleen said...

Umm, as a massage therapist( with humans),
You can rub her little forearm and another method: tissue release: to address pain on dorsal paw
Start at her elbow, particularly dorsal/lateral ....take up the slack in the tissue then head off/ pull drag at a 45* angle (elbow to mid-forearm -the muscles that usually
Refer pain to back of paw
It may also be referred pain from the neck muscles(scalenes)same techniques applied to neck and shoulders.( especially front of neck from side of windpipe to side of neck ) Do left and right sides-(keeps nervous system balanced.)
Then
Stretch - full range of joint motion( pain - free) flex - extend at wrist three or so times ( this type of stretch resets nervous systems awareness of/to new/expanded pain free range of motion for that joint/ muscle(s).

and encourage water drinking,too.
Do all once a day or so for a week or so ...
Hopefully helpful , anything better than 5% improvement is gravy ( usually 50-90% better first time...)
Are lots of other techniques which may be more effective for particular individual...