Going ..going..gone

The bandage went ten days ago. Both the vet when she took the final dressing off, and a vet nurse friend who saw it by chance a few days after that, both said how amazing the rate of healing has been and that usually the wound breaks down that but her pad looks great. It has gone from strength to strength and now looks just like all the other pads and is as tough as they are ie very. I thought I'd have to build up her use of the pad very carefully but she was good on it straight away though I was careful about the surfaces she was able to move freely on for the first three days. And then didn't ask her to run or turn on anything gravelly for a bit after that. Since the beginning of last week we have been able to focus entirely on fitness. Swimming in the sea and at hydrotherapy pool, lots of walks and re-starting agility at Small height, V-d weaves, moving up to Medium then at the end of the week to Large height and upright weaves and leaving the full contacts till then too.

She has such a deep level of fitness that I wasn't afraid she'd lose huge amounts of core strength though we have been doing tricks like wobble board high fives (;)), skateboarding, standing in a small pot and rollovers and shuffle and reverse and rewind and circle and so on to work on the small muscles and soft tissue just to be on the safe side.

So these are my top tips for quick healing of cut pads that need stitches (though I am sure they would help too if no stitches were needed) for anyone that has not had this experience before. If you have then skip it!

Keep the dressing (and so the wound) bone dry. Not even damp. We would put our hands onto and into the grass on the lawn or out on to paths before she was allowed out. Any dampness felt meant that the drip bag had to be worn. I was paranoid about this.

No free-running walks - except 200 yards along the path to sniff, do what was needed, and then sniff some more, eat grass, look about and so on. I'd stretch it to 10 - 15 mins but almost all of that she was just sniffing here and there while on a harness and lead at all times.

I tried letting her watch the agility class I run once - just the once! - on her lead and harness with her tuggy to rag on thinking she'd just do that while watching (as she usually does) but when she began to hop up and down I took her back to the van at the top of the field away from it all. That looked like too much activity to me and wasn't taking any chances because..

As dogs do sweat through their pads going out walking and generally jumping around even at home were no-nos as this would have created a sweaty dressing and compromised the wound. Yuck.

When unsupervised for even a few minutes, she went in a crate (if I had to go out and at night) with bonnet on so she could not jump around if someone went past, knocked on the door etc. I didn't want her banging around with the bonnet on and damaging herself and if she couldn't be supervised completely then I couldn't be sure she'd leave her dressing alone so the crate really helped both problems.

Lots and lots of rest. Luckily Nellie is quiet around the house but if she had been more like Pop and ready to leap into action at the drop of a feather then I'd have crated her more as I did for Pop for three months twice! I did anyway for the first week to force her to sleep but then let her have more freedom in the house as time went on so long as she was supervised constantly AND quietly resting. It was only for three weeks with Nellie - a very short time really when all is said and done.

Keep the stitches in and all the above in place too for three weeks - not rushing that last stage of healing made a huge difference.

Keep the wound dressed for the whole three weeks too- changing once a week. If doing all the above it should only need to be taken off to check all is well and replaced.

Finally, I have no idea if it really helped but I gave her aloe vera juice once a day (two teaspoons) in with her mince etc so she couldn't taste it. I couldn't put anything on the wound obviously so I felt it could help her healing if she had the stuff internally. Your guess is as good as mine really but I'm quite taken with the idea that it did help. Consequently she is still on it each day and so is Archie for general well being and when I think of it I chuck some in some juice for me.

And so tomorrow we are off to do two days competing at Dashin Dogs, a third day judging (Snooker -eek)and then to Wyre for two days. She'll be wild and I'll be rusty but we'll have fun anyway. At the start I wasn't sure we'd be OK even for the semis so anything else is a bonus.

And of course while we have been at home for the month there has been plenty to do. I have done a lot of work - there's always more to do but I have done far more than I hoped I would - done some maintenance around the house and got on with this little project:








Much better. We edged it with oak sleepers from a reclamation yard and filled the hole with soil from a big pile of it that we took out fo the veg patch area 4 years ago to create the raised beds. The chickens have been scratching around on it all that time so it is well manured and weed free! Planted with bee and butterfly friendly perennials (some came from a neighbour which was nice) I am looking forward to seeing how it develops. Got lots of bulbs (crocus, narcissus and tulip)to go in too for the Spring and I hope to get some hollyhock seeds to throw in for next year. I'd quite like granny bonnets too....I've been restrained and not packed a load of plants in which is a mistake I have made before in previous gardens.

Alec came to stay this weekend too and we had a great time taking him out for meals and to see the last Harry Potter instalment at the Tivoli in Wimborne. We volunteered there (before agility!) for a couple of years. It's a lovely 1930s Art Deco theatre/cinema that is almost entirely run by volunteers. Bought Al a big pile of books that he chose from Waterstones in Bournemouth where we also went. It was his 12th birthday this week! Took the dogs too for an outing (and to Wimborne market in the morning). They had lots of attention and were welcome in Waterstones where they fell asleep on the carpet only waking up to have fuss! Iain planted himself on a sofa and he and Alec read bits to each other of books and I dipped into Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea(neither of them were interested in my choices unsurprisingly!) . I loved them as a child. Along with the 'Little House on the Prairie' stories. Must get the set of those someday and re-read them...