The Puppytoes Patient
Many people have asked where I came up with the name for the puppytoes.net store. It comes from our Shop Mascot, Cragar's, cute little feet. When he was little he'd nibble on his little toes every now and then, so I used to tell him he had the cutest little puppy toes. Yes, I'm weird, what can I say?
But the name stuck and puppytoes.net was born.
Now our shop mascot has cute little injured toes.
Last week, Cragar was out in the yard on his leash, doing his business, and his leash got stuck behind some bushes. I went out to untangle the leash from all the branches, then brought him inside. He came in, ate his food, and walked around and checked things out for a little bit. At that point I was laying down, taking a little breather before I started making dinner when Cragar comes bounding into the bed, followed closely by his Daddy.
Apparently Cragar was licking at his paw and when "Daddy" looked down to see what was going on, there was blood everywhere. When we finally corralled him to see what happened, we discovered a deep gash running the entire length of the large pad on his paw.
We immediately put pressure on it, then decided to take him to the vet. $261 dollars later he was better with three stiches in his paw and a bandage we were to keep on for three days. The vet also gave us some amoxicillin to prevent infection since the wound was so deep. When I saw the bottle of pills, my first thought was, "You have got to be kidding me!" These were adult-sized capsules and given our past experience with medicines, there was no way that stuff was going down his throat without a fight. The vet's suggestion was to wrap it up in something "mushy", like liverwurst, cheese, or a marshmallow. He really doesn't know our dear little Cragar that well, because Cragar's smart enough to remove the offending medicine from said liverwurst, cheese, or marshmallow, then spit it on the floor.
But I found a magic bullet.
I cannot take credit for the following recipe as I found it somewhere on the internet several months ago. I can't find the site where I originally found it, so unfortunately I can't provide a link. But someone came up with this fabulous little recipe, so I'll give some anonymous credit right here!
Pumpkin Drops
1 15 oz. can Pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling, just regular pumpkin)
3/4c. Cream of Rice cereal (no need to make it, use it dry)
1/2c. Powdered milk
Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
Combine all those ingredients, use a spoon to drop in blobs on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet.
Bake for 15-20 minutes.
Let cool and store in refrigerator.
So what's great about these treats is 1- they're so easy to make, 2- they're perfectly "squishy" enough to hide a pill in, 3- pumpkin is actually good for dogs - it provides vitamins, minerals, and roughage! Get this, we avoided the whole diarrhea-with-antibiotics thing because apparently in dogs with diarrhea, pumpkin "hardens" everything up. At the same time, dogs that are a bit constipated can eat pumpkin to loosen up. A miracle food, that pumpkin! Cragar successfully took all but one of his pills - that happened to be when he must have bitten right through the capsule - there was powder all over the floor. But even with that one he ate up the bits of pumpkin!
As for how his little toes are doing, well, he gets his stitches out in a couple of days. We think he managed to lick at the one stich at bit so it looks like there's still a little gash there, but he's walking and running around just like he always does.
Thank goodness for pumpkin!
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