Thursday, November 10, 2011

Jake's Accident

Oh me. Oh my.

I am only now able to speak of this.  A little over a week has gone by since "the incident".  I had PTSD for several days afterward, combined with severe sleep deprivation.  I might have been a tad on the crazy side.

Last Tuesday night, Steve and Seth were in the backyard with our dog Jake.  Jake is a 9 year old yellow lab who has bursts of energy like a puppy.  He was running circles around the yard, and although we have never officially clocked him, we have suspicions that he can run about 30 mph.

On one of his circles, he ran underneath the trampoline at full speed.  The trampoline legs have bolts coming through them and sticking out about 3 inches on the insides of the legs.

You know where this is headed now, don't you.  Is your body tensing up, your face crinkling because you know this can't be good, right?

No, it was not good.  The bolt ripped his left side open.

Lot's of blood, lot's of screaming, Caleb looked out the window and saw the carnage and promptly threw up all over the living room floor.  Orange goldfish throw up to be exact.

I called my mom to come stay with the kids while Steve and I rushed Jake to the vet.  I am pretty sure I was yelling into the phone, something about bleeding to death and what not.  I hope it wasn't too long before I told her it was Jake and not any of the humans living in this house.

Steve got into the back of my 4runner with Jake and a bunch of towels.  I was driving like a crazy person and made him car sick, on top of the fact that he was having to look at our dogs insides.  Not a good combo.

We were about 2 minutes from the vet when we came upon a car accident. The fire department had the road shut down and we had to turn around and make a 15 minute detour with lot's of traffic.  Sweetness.  That didn't cause me any added stress at all.

We got to the vet, and Steve was gray.  They took Jake in on a stretcher (and probably should have taken Steve on a stretcher as well...) and two vets and 4 vet techs started discussing what to do.  All the while, Jake is sitting there with his skin gaping open and I am trying to keep someone between me and him at all times because I am sure I will either faint or throw up.

They decide to stay late and do emergency surgery.  Because our vet is awesome like that.  And at about 8pm that night, I brought home a dog that had a 14 inch incision from the middle of his back, all the way around his side and down under his belly.  He had two drainage tubes sticking out near the incision which meant that he couldn't be on the carpet without a towel underneath him.

I will spare you the gory details, but let's just say ol' Jake was a lucky dog.  This is is a picture of him the day after his surgery.  I figured I could put a small one on here and not gross anyone out.  If you want to see what it REALLY looks like, just click on the picture and you can see it in much clearer detail.  Just warning you...it is not for the faint of heart!


(If you were brave enough to look at the picture and are wondering what the white strips are along the incision, they are rubber strips that are meant to reinforce the incision and keep the sutures intact.)

So I mentioned earlier that I had severe sleep deprivation...it is because of the cone.  THE CONE!  We have taken to calling Jake "Cone Man".  He has had the cone now for 10 days, and he still acts like it is a surprise that he can't fit through small openings without snagging the cone.  He constantly runs into furniture and doesn't make it through doorways on the first attempt.

The cone is noise-y.  He usually sleeps in our room, and the first night I wanted to keep an eye on him. He got up and down all night, and scraped that darn cone up and down our closet doors and bedroom walls all night.  ALL. NIGHT.

Now I know most of you are thinking, "Put him in another room for goodness sakes!"  But remember, we have the drainage tube issue.  And we had already done wall-to-wall towels and sheets on our bedroom floor.

So we have tried him in the bathroom, the living room, the office and we can pretty much hear the scraping of the cone on walls, furniture and doors from any room in the house.  It is that loud.

Even with the cone, he found a way to lick the bottom few inches of the incision.  So now we have the cone and.......

THE 80'S T-SHIRT!


Why so forlorn Jake?  You are stylin'!


We are really looking forward to ditching the cone.  Hopefully next week sometime.  Until then, we will continue to be serenaded by the sound of stiff plastic scraping on all the hard surfaces of our house.

I wanted to leave you with Jake's feelings about the cone, since he is the one having to wear it and all.

I asked him how the cone made him feel inside.  This is what he had to say.





4 comments:

Anonymous said...

{{{hugs}}} Poor Jake! I'm so glad he's up and around after all that, albeit in a very noisy way!

Karah said...

Holy cow!!!! What an ordeal! I'm so glad he's ok!!

Heather said...

That 80's t-shirt is hilarious, Courtney! But, hey, whatever works. I feel ya with the cone. I still remember baby Buddy with his cone for his eye surgery. It was sad to see him try to get around with that thing on. Poor Jake! I still can't believe that bolt tore him half way open. Crazy!!

Again, always lovin' your stories. You tell them so well!

Unknown said...

Oh me. Oh my. Is right. I can't believe that actually happened. Glad to see he is patched up. Do something with those bolts, duck tape, towels, something!