CONE FREE!

The Cone of Shame is GONE!! Finally!! Saturday Daisy had her follow-up vet visit and he was shocked at how much better her ears are. We can finally stop putting that disgusting oily medicine in her ears every night. We still have to finish up the pills over the next several weeks though.

What was our first order of business? GIVING HER A BATH!! This dirty dog hasn’t had a bath in THREE WEEKS because of her ear problem.

Here she is before the bath, all overgrown with oily ears.

Ugh. My fluffy ears are all flat! And I’m overgrown like a weed patch!

I mean, take a look at these things!

Now she’s fluffy again….EXCEPT on her ears. DD shampooed them and shampooed them, but it’s going to take several washings to get all that oil out of her hair. Her ear flaps still look stringy. Ugh.

With my hair overgrown and my ears trimmed but still greasy, I look out of balance – my head looks too small for my fluffy, overgrown body! I look like one of those “square sheep” in Americana paintings!

We switched to a hypoallergenic shampoo and are looking into making our own to eliminate all those chemicals.

But here’s the downside….take a look at the horrible word on this new medication the vet gave us:

We have to use this medication in Daisy’s ears twice a week for the rest of her life!

DH’s boss, who lives near us, uses a holistic vet who has worked wonders with his dog. Although our vet is excellent and I wouldn’t consider leaving him, I plan to take Daisy to the holistic vet just to see if she can give us something more natural to ward off these awful allergic reactions in the future. Fingers crossed!

We’re part of Thursday Barks and Bytes Blog Hop! Thanks to blog hosts 2 Brown Dawgs and Heart Like a Dog!

Daisy’s Silly Cone Impersonations

Daisy seems to have resigned herself to wearing the cone. She’s being a really good sport about it and even waits patiently while DD puts the cone on her.

Along with her positive attitude, she’s entertaining us with some fun “impersonations”. Like….

Daisy the Funnel

Just drop a carrot slice down here, I have a great funnel system to catch all food!

Daisy the Headless Horseman

Heehee! You can’t see me!

Daisy the Ghostly Glow

BOO!

Daisy the Collector
(I don’t even want to tell you the things the velcro on that cone picks up and drags around the house!)

Where’d that sock go???

Sound Amplifier Daisy

Hey! Now I can pinpoint exactly where that birdie tweet is coming from!

Daisy the Bulldozer – I don’t have a video of this, but Daisy uses her cone to crash her way through anything and anyone! If one of us is standing in a doorway and Daisy wants to get through, she plows between our leg and the door frame, gets jammed up, and just keeps pushing forward like a wind-up toy with every ounce of little Havachon strength until we move aside for her. She does the same thing with furniture pieces that are too close to allow her cone through. Maybe I should call her Daisy the Cone Bully!

 

The Cone of Shame Returns….

What is going on in this family?! First I sprained my back, and yesterday one of my fillings started disintegrating in chunks….and my dentist can’t see me until tomorrow. I HATE needles and I know I’m in for a series – UGH.Plus I don’t know how my back will handle that chair of his. AND – now Daisy is back in the Cone of Shame! GEEZ!! Is there a target on us?!

Over the past week, we noticed Daisy was scratching at her left ear a little more than usual and shaking her head insanely like she was making a milkshake inside it. She’d just gotten her ears plucked a week ago, and that usually causes her to scratch and shake for a couple of days, but not to excess like this.

This time, she didn’t stop. But it did lessen.

Until yesterday.

After her morning walk yesterday, the shaking and scratching went into overdrive. She was shaking her head so hard that her ears were flapping like crazy – they sounded like a helicopter coming in for a landing. She was also scratching at the inside, which alarmed me the most.

Do I really have to wear this thing again?!

We had looked inside with a flashlight during the week and didn’t notice anything wrong. But yesterday the inside looked reddish-purple and raw.

Fortunately, DD was still home, so she arranged to work from home to take Daisy to the vet, since I can’t manage that yet (my first trial car ride over the weekend didn’t go so well…). The dear man took her in almost immediately. When he looked inside her ear, DD said he made a very disconcerting sound. Diagnosis: severe spring allergies made worse by the plucking. He didn’t use the word “infection” but I think she was close to getting one. Apparently it’s worse in the left ear but has started in the right as well.

This medicine sure makes me pant a lot!

So he gave her a shot and put some gunky stuff in her ear, which we have to do every day. This isn’t going to be fun; she really doesn’t like it, and I can only imagine how uncomfortable it must feel to her to have her ears filled with oily gunk. And now her ears are all oily on the outside too. Ick. Plus she has pills to take as well, though she’ll enjoy them since they’ll be in peanut butter – the thin silver lining. 🙂

If these things continue, she’ll have to have some allergy testing done. I’ve never had a dog with so many issues!

We had to resort to the cone to stop her from scratching her ears. Poor little thing – so sweet about letting us do what we have to, but I’m sure she’s not happy about it at all!

So….is there an expiration date on bad luck????