Life in the Blankenheim household sure has been… well, eventful, in the last 24 hours. Yesterday Shadow jumped while Mike was opening the gate to his pen and got his paw stuck. That caused him to land funny, and he came down right on top of the latch. He limped away from it and I checked his paws. He seemed like he walked it off, so we headed out for a few hours for lunch with some friends. When we got back, he was limping even more. He let out these squeaks of pain on the stairs and I knew something was wrong. I had him lay down, and that’s when I noticed the almost 2 inch gash under his arm.

We immediately tossed him in the car and headed down to the emergency vet in Sacramento. The poor little guy was very clearly in pain… he just sat there (not even wagging his tail) when the vet came in and checked him out. He very clearly had a puncture wound. They did a chest x-ray to make sure that he hadn’t penetrated his chest cavity (he didn’t, thank goodness), then sedated him and put in a drain since it was so big – the vet said it was about 2.5 inches deep! They stitched some of the muscle together (think of getting stabbed between your armpit and chest muscles) and sent us home with a sleepy dog, antibiotics, pain pills, and a hefty bill. The rest of the night was awful – I slept downstairs with him and he was completely in pain and out of it. I think I finally fell asleep around 4am with the lights on because something about the dark freaked him out.

He has to wear the cone of shame so that he doesn’t rip the drain out… and is completely doped up. It is so hard to see him hurting (you can definitely tell when the pain meds wear off) and he hates the cone (although he’s tolerant of it). We go back in on Wednesday to have the drain evaluated and hopefully removed.

My poor little guy!