Cone of Shame

If you’ve seen the movie Up, then you know of what I speak.  If you haven’t – what are you waiting for, it’s really funny for adults and kids alike!  Anyways, many of the characters in the animated movie are dogs that can talk through translators on their collars, and one of the dogs has an e-collar which is referred to as the “cone of shame” throughout the movie.  Hilarious!

We are having our first experience with the cone of shame at our house.  Laser and Sophie were playing chase in the yard Sunday night and Laser bit Sophie’s ear, causing two cuts and a missing chunk out of her right ear.  Let me tell you – floppy dog ears bleed a lot and it gets everywhere when they shake their heads!!  I had blood spattered across my face, on the wall, curtains, etc.  I’m sure I’ll be finding little spatters for quite some time.

Ears and tails are apparently among the worst injuries for dogs – they’re loose and can be re injured easily.  With the ear the blood supply comes from the top, so they had to trim away all the damaged parts, effectively performing the same surgery as an ear crop – though a much smaller portion.  She spent one night with her ear bandaged to the top of her head in addition to the cone of shame.  She was not a happy camper, as you can see in the photo.  It’s pathetic how she runs into stuff and looks around all bewildered.

Arden is fascinated with Sophie’s cone and “boo-boo”, trying to touch her and kiss her.  One side benefit of all of this is that I think we might have gotten the point across to Arden that biting is not nice.  The explanation to her goes something like “Laser bit Sophie and gave her a boo-boo and she has to wear the funny hat and is sad.  That’s why we don’t bite our friends.”

Today we got the bandage removed and Sophie seems a little happier without that.  You can see the healthy chunk out of her right ear in this photo.  She’ll have to wear the cone for 10-14 days, so we’re supposed to have the sutures removed on the 20th.  It’s going to be a bit of logistics until then, as we can’t really have Laser and Sophie together outside because she’s supposed to have only light activity and leash walks and Laser doesn’t at all understand that she can’t play (nor apparently that he’s the reason).  We also don’t feel comfortable leaving them together in the house while we’re at work all day, so we’ll have to confine one of them to the basement – I vote for Laser, since he’s the weenie who caused all this grief!

A little background on Sophie is that she was a rescued dog we adopted in 2008 before Arden was born to be a companion for Laser.  She was billed as a Lab/Great Dane mix, but she’s likely purebred Lab – just from a tall and lanky breed line.  She had been wandering around during the winter apparently starving and started hanging around a nursing home.  They started leaving food for her and eventually got her to come close enough to be caught.  She’s a super sweet girl, but the only non-retrieving Labrador I’ve ever run across.  This might explain why nobody was looking for her – if she was meant to be someone’s bird dog that had no interest in bringing a bird back, she might have been left or allowed to wander off.  She has this amazing vertical leap – literally head high to my husband’s 6’5″.  We’ll go to pick her up at daycare and she’s just bouncing away behind the 3′ tall x-pen ignoring that she could easily clear it if she wanted.  She’s pretty high-strung in certain situations; bouncing up and down when we try to put the leash on for walks.  She also doesn’t bark – she “whoops”.  She’s also super snuggly and I’ll grudgingly admit she makes a very nice nap buddy (I hate that she gets on the bed sometimes.  I’ll kick her off, but Dave just lets her get her snuggle on.).

So, anyone having any challenges in their life right now?  How’re you dealing?