My brother’s dog Kuma, a pit bull/lab/boxer sort of mix, had surgery on Tuesday to remove what the vet believes is a skin tag from her shoulder. Apparently labs and lab mixes are prone to getting random fatty lumps on their bodies. The folks at the vet are going to biopsy the lump, which must have been pretty big — Kuma came home with five stitches in her shoulder.
She also came with a hip new fashion accessory — the Elizabethan collar, or as I like to call it, the conehead. Kuma has been sentenced to wear the conehead for the next ten days, until she returns to the vet to have her stitches removed. During that time, we were told to keep the stitches clean and dry. No antibiotic ointment, no lotion, no water… and especially no licking.
Once the anesthetic wore off and Kuma started feeling and acting like her normal self, the collar has been the bane of her existence. She can’t see her feet and refuses to go up or down stairs with it on. When she wants attention, she bangs into us with the conehead. Worst of all, she can’t reach her head to scratch an itchy ear or curl around to enjoy a good old leg biting session. It’s very sad to see her pawing at the collar in a futile attempt to scratch her ear!
A dog’s natural instinct, when faced with a wound, is to lick. Licking helps keep the wound free of dirt and debris. It is a comforting action, soothing the injured area. Other dogs may lick an injured dog or person out of this instinct to heal and comfort. When I have a cut or scrape, the dogs will lick me; when my brother gets a new tattoo, his dogs always want to lick it while it is healing.
When my Moose had his neutering a few years ago, the vet did not send me home with an Elizabethan collar. Some licking was okay; I just had to keep an eye out for extreme redness of the skin and extreme heat in the area of the stitches — two signs of possible infection. Just like different doctors may approach the same illness or injury in different ways, different veterinarians may have different opinions on the value of licking.
And by the way… if you were worried about poor Lily and how distraught she was without her Boss Dog around on surgery day, you’ll be glad to see this:
