The cone of shame is horrific for dogs but it's even worse for humans. Let me explain why.
When Macintosh had to be first subjected to the cone of shame last Monday he was really sad and quite out of it so really although the cone bothered him it didn't cause too much of a bother for me. He simply laid on the sofa and just looked quite forlorn. However, fast forward a week and the story is quite different. Macintosh has now become a menace!
On Saturday I went food shopping and when I returned I was greeted by a very excitable puppy. Nothing unusual about that he's often quite mad. However when I started bringing in the shopping he then got even more excited and decided to dash towards the shopping to sniff it all. The problem was I was standing in the way! So mid way through putting my shopping away I was hit full force on the back of the ankle with the edge of the cone of shame. Ouch!
Picture me sitting on the sofa busy reading or on the laptop or knitting. Macintosh comes strolling in and decides he wants to sit next to me. Before I have time to dissuade or stop him he is launching, again full force, at the sofa. I get clonked on the head with the cone of shame and then have it digging into my side as he proceeds to settle himself down into a comfortable position.
Those two incidents doesn't even begin to cover the horrors of the cone. Think of the wonderful sound of it being dragged across the floor as we go walking which is highly embarrassing, especially early on a Sunday morning.Think of the numerous times I get hit when he's thrashing around playing with a toy, totally ignorant of my presence in the room. Then there's the endless cleaning as he comes in from the garden with half the grass and mud attached to it. Do you get the impression that I'm not a fan of the cone of shame?
Well possibly the most irritating bit comes when its food time. See Macintosh has not worked out how to eat with the cone on. He simply sees food and is desperate to eat it. He attempts to get the food out but forgets the cone will get in the way. Instead of allowing the cone to frame the bowl he just sticks his nose straight in and the cone inevitably pushes the bowl away. That then results in howling and whining until I come and retrieve the bowl. It only gets worse then he manages to drop a piece of food out of his mouth and has it land in his cone. This results in baying and barking with lots of thrashing around until I come and sort it out. Honestly food time is a nightmare!!
Thank goodness the cone of shame can disappear before the week is out. I'm not sure Macintosh can take much more of this. I know I can't!!
H
Some of the more observant amongst you will have noticed that today is indeed Tuesday and therefore I am a day late in posting this. For those of you with access to Facebook or Instagram this will not come as a surprise.
You see yesterday evening I had begun to write my usual Macintosh Monday post which involved his clever escape from the garden under the watchful eye of my mum causing me to run around the house in front of the builders in my pjs! But as I was busy typing away Andrew called me. I then stopped what I was doing and chatted to him. This was all fine, quite normal for an evening until Macintosh walked past me whimpering and bleeding profusely from his foot! Somehow he had managed to pull off his claw exposing the inner claw and causing quite a lot of pain.
This necessitated a trip at 8pm down to our out of hours vets practice to see if they could remove the offending claw and stem the flow of blood. Upon arrival Macintosh began to panic because even in his state of shock he knew vets were never a good thing. This was then reinforced by the vet attempting to simply pull off his claw whilst I held onto him. After a few unsuccessful attempt and some heartbreaking yowls from Mac the vet whisked Mac away to see if, with the help of a nurse, they could sort it out.
Unfortunately it wasn't that simple and therefore poor old Mac had to be sedated, quite heavily too it turned out in order for them to remove the claw, trim it down to the base and clean the wound. So there was I in a state of worry, feeling like a mother who's child is poorly, sipping tea in a darkened vet surgery waiting to hear he was alright.
Eventually the vet came out and said they had sorted the claw and he was just coming round ready to go home. Of course with Macintosh its never that simple and the extreme bleeding began again necessitating an extremely large purple bandage being applied, which in turn meant the cone of shame! Finally at 10:30pm we could finally make our way home (via MacDonalds for my tea!) to allow a still slightly high, very poorly and bedraggled dog to sleep off the painkillers.
However even the night wasn't simple as it involved constant waking up and bolting out of bed, heavy panting, whimpering and wild looking eyes. Not something I'm eager to repeat again as when I allowed him to crawl onto the bed he repeatedly butted me with his cone of shame!! Not fun.
All in all an eventful night in the Woodruff household. At the end of the saga I still have no clue what caused the claw to get ripped off and am still cleaning blood out of the carpet. On that note I will leave you with a picture of a very sorry but very cute bandaged Macintosh.
H
