Party dog

We have a yellow labrador retriever who weighs about 95-100 pounds. She isn't fat, just huge. She's a member of the Women's Yellow Lab Olympic Basketball Team. (We can't let her get fat, because she has congenital knee problems.)

A few days ago, she had a cyst removed from her right front paw. That evening, she managed to get upstairs, but she couldn't get down, because her paw hurt. For those of you who are not dog owners, "house-trained" doesn't mean that the dog knows how to use the plumbing in the house. So being stuck on the second floor was potentially a large problem. I rushed upstairs to help her down by lifting her front end and reducing the weight she had to put on her foot. The operation was a success, but the patient died. At least, I did. I got a charley horse in my back, which has improved but isn't yet 100%.

Last night, the dog chewed off her bandage, so my wife had to take her to the emergency vet clinic. They fixed the bandage and fitted her (the dog, not my wife) with a "bonnet" that keeps her (again, the dog, not my wife) from chewing the bandage.



The bonnet has one drawback: it greatly limits peripheral vision. So the dog couldn't figure out how to jump back into our car. She kept bumping her bonnet into the bumper of the car. (I guess that's why it's called a bumper.)

And going up and coming down the stairs is also a problem.



The bandage and the bonnet, we hope, are coming off on Wednesday.

UPDATE: Eating meals turns out to be a little tricky. But if you get the seals working around the bonnet, you can really have some suction going.