She thought Woody’s feet looked like they’d been scraped against rough cement or pavement. She cleaned up his hind feet, put on some ointment and bandaged them up, then sent ointment and bandages home with instructions to apply daily and get some booties to keep the bandages in place. She also said to check around to see if there’s anything sharp or jagged that he might be scraping his feet on.
Well, that rang a bell. Woody loves to play the running game. He stands on the deck and we say “okay,” and he tears off down the stairs, across the driveway and skids to a halt at the edge of the embankment, right in front of his favorite squirrel tree. There’s usually a squirrel somewhere in the branches to taunt him as he barks at it. He’s actually worn a groove in the driveway from doing this numerous times daily for years. So I checked and sure enough, at the end of the groove worn by his feet was a rock with sharp, jagged horizontal edges.
I pried out the rock, and he’ll be wearing cute little Winnie-the-Pooh booties on his hind feet for awhile. Damn squirrels. But he gets a treat every time I change the bandages and booties so it's not a total loss.
"The treats are delicious . . .
. . . but the booties are still embarrassing."
The vet, by the way, was from Germany, and she said when she came over here to study, her lack of English language skills almost cost her an internship. Her veterinary work was fine, but they also tested her communications skills. One question tripped her up. She was asked about what animals frequently transmit rabies. She knew one important answer to that question, but almost flunked because she didn’t know how to say it in English. The problematic word: squirrel.
It’s always the squirrels. They're cheeky little bastards.
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