Flying Poodles

My poor baby Dancer…

She’s fine, really, but I’m completely traumatized.

Dancer managed to completely tear off one of the toenails on her back left foot. (In attempting to look on the bright side of this, it has already occurred to me that now I have one less toenail to trim.)

She accomplished this today at our agility lesson. Not on the equipment, mind you, she did it while she was getting out of her crate. She came out of her crate–I noticed she caught her foot, I checked it, didn’t see anything wrong, she didn’t even limp, she did several complete training runs–I was focusing her working at a distance and she did beautifully–and then went back into her crate so I could work with Elly. Which was when I noticed that her foot was a bloody mess.

I dunked her foot in her water bowl to clean it off a little, carried her to the car, went back for Elly, and drove straight to the vet.

Notice that I didn’t say “wrapped it in a towel.”

There was blood all over my car. I was pushing my luck on the speed limit, trying to walk that hairy edge between making the lights and getting stopped, and I kept imagining trying to explain the pool of blood on the front seat (where Dancer was curled up).

At the vet’s, they put me in a room right away when the saw how much blood Dancer was dripping everywhere. They only had to trim off the tiniest bit of remaining nail, and she didn’t flinch at all–I sat on the floor with her across my lap–and then they bandaged it. Layers of bandage. Lots of layers.

Then she got up and walked across the room with me. Leaving a trail of bloody footprints.

So they took the bandage off, doused her foot with a ton of styptic powder, and rebandaged it.

That one held; we came home, and now she’s sound asleep.