Redirecting

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Plus One: Mr. Griffey

It's official - we have adopted Mr. Griffey.  In other words, we flunked fostering, where the point is to give the dog a temporary home and help him adapt to new surroundings.  Griffey got along so well with Oscar that we decided to adopt him ourselves.


Mr. Griffey (aka, G-man, Griffino, The Little Guy) is doing better around me, but he's still bipolar. He could be sitting at my feet one minute, and the next minute he'll be barking at me and pacing back and forth gruffling to himself.  He loves Mrs. Dynamite, Oscar, and grazing around our yard and garden though, and I'm pretty certain that he's happy to be here.


Oscar is recovering from an ear and eye issue.   He was acting bizarre on Saturday morning, and after I cleaned his ears (just for the heck of it, because he's had ear infections in the past, and because we were cleaning Griffey's ears) he was acting even worse - totally not himself.  Sunday we decided to bring him to the emergency vet, where we got 4 prescriptions (oral pain med, ear cleaner, ear treatment, and eye treatment) and a $265 bill.  The vet was more concerned with Oscar's intensely irritated eye, which had been bothering him off and on for 2 weeks, but I kept trying to explain that Oscar was acting funny because of his ears.  That didn't stop us from getting O-dog a glaucoma test, and a tear production test.   I joked to Mrs. Dynamite, "How do you think they do the tear production test - do they twist his tail until he cries?"  She moped, "No, they probably yell at him "YOUR MOMMY DOESN'T LOVE YOU ANYMORE" until he cries."  When they brought Oscar back to us after the tests, he was fine - no glaucoma, and tear production at the low end of normal.  He's doing better after a few days of meds, but he hates the ear cleaner - shaking his head obsessively for a long time after you put it in - like a swimmer with water stuck in his ear.

Side note home pet care advice:  once back in NYC our vet had cleaned Oscar's ear with a very long q-tip, and dug out a disgusting amount of black funk.  I said "will I hurt him if I try to do that myself?"  Expecting the answer to be "yes, don't try this at home," but my vet told me that dogs' ear canals are L-shaped, so you're not at risk of hitting the ear drum.  The emergency vet we saw on Sunday strongly disagreed with that suggestion - and said that he won't even stick things in dogs' ears unless they are sedated, as a dog turning their head quickly can have serious consequences if you're probing their ear when it happens.  So, we won't be using a q-tip anymore if and when we clean the dogs' ears.

-KD 

7 comments:

txchick57 said...

Congratulations. I have three foster failures here (French Bulldogs). I don't know that a "foster" ever gets out of this place!

Anonymous said...

Just be glad O-Dog hasn't developed an ear hematoma w/his excessive head shaking. Our chocolate lab developed one of these over the last week (he has chronic ear issues as well) and we just dropped $700 for a surgical procedure called the "punch method"! Great stuff.

Happy to hear O-dog and Griff are staying together.

Daniel said...

Take eye irritation seriously. Dogs can scratch their eyes on brush whatever and it can turn serious. Our Spaniel got a bad infection and we ended up putting drops in every hour for 24 hours, round the clock. My wife and I set an alarm to alternate through the night. We ended up curing the infection but the ulcer was so deep that the eye vet was worried it might perforate and spread infection into his brain. They ended up removing his eye and he lived the rest of his life as a pirate. My wife felt horrible that we did not notice and catch the infection sooner. Awful. Also, eye infections can be really painful for the dog. Forget about the cost, you own dogs, care costs.

EconomicDisconnect said...

KD,
congrats on the family addition! Maybe if you did not yell "BOOM" everytime you crack a joke or yell "PONZI" when you read something the dog might not be so afraid!
I am just kidding, meant to be funny.

Kid Dynamite said...

gyc - i walk on pins and needles around the little guy...

EconomicDisconnect said...

I get you. As long as food is involved my dog does not care what i do (unless its time to cut his nails, then all bets are off!) but some little dogs can be hard to figure out.

Transor Z said...

KD, a good dog trainer might be able to help de-sensitize Mr. Griffey to ordinary household stimuli. Looks like there's a guy in NH, Terence Kirby, who trained under an absolutely top-notch trainer we know at Pawsitive Dog here in Boston, Jennifer Vickery:

http://www.nhspca.org/training/bios.htm

If he's got .01% of her talent he might be worth contacting.