Pogo's Poke

One of the bummer things about this house is that the back porch stairs don't lead to the fenced in backyard, they lead to the driveway. That means if I want to make sure Pogo only stays in the backyard, I have to go out with her, lead her past the fence gate and close her in (and go get her again in a couple minutes). But, well, I have three kids, and sometimes I just can't go out and do that.

Being a dog in a new place, Pogo would take advantage and go explore. I found her several times sniffing around way down the road. One day she was gone a long time- once she came home, she stayed hidden for a while. During bedtime, the kids were petting her and she yelped. I went to see what was up... I found something crusty on her neck. It was dried blood. I looked closer and found a two-inch laceration in her skin! Oh Pogo!

I consulted my on-call physician and Sean said she'd definitely need stitches. Luckily (not) it was after hours so we had to find an Emergency Vet. One was found and off she and I went. They checked her out and told me they'd need a few hours to do the whole procedure. So I left her there and headed back home.

Now, this happened to be the day before we were leaving for Branson. The night my mother was flying in to help me drive the next day. So Sean went to go pick her up from the airport while I did the packing I was planning on doing instead of going to the Doggie ER.

A little after they came back home, I got the call that Pogo was ready to be picked up, so Sean did that for me too.

That pooch was so out of it when she came home. She had been on anesthesia, so it must have still been affecting her. The vet told Sean that the laceration we could see was caused by a three-inch puncture wound! He guessed she ran into a stick. Because it was so deep, they actually put a drainage tube in addition to the eight stitches.

The one good thing about Sean not being able to go to the reunion was that he was there to care for Pogo. Can you imagine me dropping her off to a stranger the next day? So Sean came home from orientation each day to give her love and clean up all the blood droplets that came out of her tube.

Pogo's doing great now, her hair's almost all grown back and there's no sign of lasting damage. The one bonus to all this: Pogo doesn't wander anymore. That was one traumatic and expensive lesson to learn!