Never a dull moment

[Some of these pictures aren't real pretty, so I'm interspersing them with pics from my garden, which is looking pretty good right now.]


Several times since I've been home I noticed that Vince seemed to be overly sensitive to touch on the left side of his head. I thought it was probably his ear infection flaring up again. He would let out a little yelp when his head brushed past a leg, a door, or another dog. I had also noticed a bit of drainage out of the eye that I attributed to allergies because my own eyes are running a lot this time of year.


Yesterday, however, Vince came up to me and looked at me with an obviously swollen face that had partially closed his left eye. The eye itself looked fine, but there was definitely swelling on his forehead over the eye. Even before talking to the vet I started him on some antibiotics, Benedryl, Rimadyl, and Tramadol to help with pain and swelling.

I'm not posting the really bloody pictures, but
you can see a bit of it here. It looked terrible
but he never really seemed distressed by it.

When I came back from meeting Samantha on Thursday afternoon, Vince presented me with a bloody face, and the eye was swollen even further. It was obvious that the abscess had burst. He looked terrible but probably felt better. The eye still looked functional and he managed to get his own face cleaned up. Throughout it all, Vince always acted normally, was eating well, and running around as usual. Vince is a tough old dog. If it had been any other dog, I probably would have gone to an emergency vet, but Vince is terrible at the vet and I really wanted him treated by someone who knew him. It didn't seem like a real emergency so I decided to wait until morning.


Come morning he looked a lot better and he still acted and ate normally, gobbling up all his pills with some canned food and dry food softened in warm water. I headed into town anyway, thinking we'd both feel better if it had at least been looked at before the weekend. The vet looked at it from a distance, we talked, and agreed to just continue the medications over the weekend and see how it goes. The infection has drained and is draining, the swelling is down, and the eye itself still looks okay. Putting hands on him to do something painful would require that he be anesthetized. Less is more when it comes to treating Vince.


What happened to him?  We don't really know. Clay told me that he had a brief run-in with Theo while I was gone. Theo was outside headed to the dog yard, and Vince ran up and nipped him from behind. He seems to think it's his job to herd other dogs. That's stupid when it comes to Theo, who is more than twice his size and less than half his age. He could have sustained a puncture wound that then got infected. It's also possible that he ran into a snake. I was concerned that one of my new bees had got him, but the vet didn't think a bee sting would have caused this.

This was the next morning. The swelling is down.

He laid down close to me, but he took treats from the
vet. He was fine as long as no one tried to touch him.