Injured Pup

Poor little Harper suffered quite the injury this week, as evidenced by her candy cane bandage..

Needless to say this bandage didn't last long (about 16 hours), so I never got a chance to take good non-blurry pictures in the daylight.  She knew she wasn't supposed to chew at the bandage, so she waited until I left for my run to have at it.

Earlier in the week she was limping a little bit, licking her foot, and pulling away when I tried to investigate.  I thought her dew claw had gotten snagged somehow, so I made an appointment at the vet.  After five minutes of investigating, the vet was about to conclude she had twister her wrist when he found a spot that looked like a scrape (it's hard to see with her long hair).  After shaving her little paw he saw that he had a puncture wound that had caused an infected abscess.  Then for the next 20 minutes I tried not to faint as they drained, washed out, and cleaned my little pup's paw.

Needless to say, Harper did not enjoy the experience much and may not happily prance into the vet's office ever again. She's on antibiotics (via puppy's first peanut butter) and her limping is down a lot.  The vet said it didn't look like a dog bite, but more like a stick had somehow punctured the top of her paw.  Bizarre, I know.

Moral of the story, always follow your gut and take your dog to the vet!  Harper is on the mend, thankfully, and will be staying away from sticks for awhile.