The Reaction

It's hard to tell, but the shiny is where his skin was dying

It's been a harrowing two weeks and a days.

It all started simply enough. Its summer time and with warm weather comes longer time spent out of of doors. With more time spent out of doors, comes more time to roll and play in things like garbage and poop; to put it bluntly.  On this particular Saturday Texas did both. Roll in poop and play in the garbage. So I did what any indoor dog mom does, and promptly bathed him. Both times.

It wasn't until early Sunday morning I realized something was very odd about Texas' fur. It was almost wavy ... as if perhaps the skin underneath was wavy.. but that couldn't be right. He must have gotten some grease on his fur, and if I rinse it of perhaps that will do the trick.

Fast forward to Monday night, when it finally came home to me that my dog's fur wasn't stuck together with grease, but something more serious was going on. This wasn't going away on its own. Tuesday morning dawned with Texas barely walking and his leg had swollen over night.

By the time I got to work I was hoping beyond hope that this was something simple, but when the doctor rushed to the front, telling me auctioneer style what was going on, before rushing back to the treatment area. My heart sank. I think I sat with my mouth open for ... a really long time.

What shampoo did you use? Don't ever use that stuff again! Your dog has a temperature of 105 that skin is (to paraphrase as I don't remember the exact words) dying and we're going to try and save it. HOwever I think we may actually have to remove that skin ok? I'm going to give him an steroid injection and some antibiotics to help his fever go down and we'll go from there.

We went home, sorrowful but with some hope. But by the time our scheduled recheck on Thursday appeared, we were grasping at straws. Wednesday had seen Texas trying to chew [the skin on] his leg off, which he almost did, prompting me to make a mad dash to Pets Supplies Plus for an e-collar and some gauze. Though I was afraid of that being the wrong course of action, I saw no choice.

The screaming on Thursday afternoon found me cringing behind the reception desk. Please don't let that be because of me? It was. Dr. R suggested we try soaking the skin in <insert technical term here> on a daily basis to see if that would help. However go ahead and prepare for surgery Monday morning.

Monday dawned with a very hungry and annoyed Texas as we made the 15 minute drive to work. Shortly there after I walk into treatment and see him out cold on the wet table, with his fur being shaved off. :(

Good news is, he doesn't look to bad without some of his fur ...Bad news his skin had to be removed. At that point the Dr. took about six inches total off his left side and sutured him back together with the remain skin. Since he didn't have enough to completely close the wounds, there were some holes. Monday we'd due to surgery again to close those holes, once the skin had some time to grow.

Since then we've been in for a bandage change on Thursday, in which they removed the sutures as that skin had died, and took some skin off the right side. Thus ensconcing him in bandages.

I now affectionately call him my little tootsie roll.
I don't think he enjoys it much.

Needless to say we've got a long road ahead of us.

He's can walk around, though doesn't like to do it much; and is eating and drinking regularly enough that I know he'll be fine. He's just miserable. He's struggled for about the last 20 minutes with his itchy bandages and not being able to itch himself; and it just breaks my heart.


So if you think about Mr. Texas, please pray that his skin grows back quickly and he can be back to his normal bouncy self!

Thanks So much.

Erin

Shampoo Used: Oster's Oatmeal Shed Control - 99% Natural