Mister Itchy

GK is an allergy dog. He is very itchy all the time, which he expresses through the obsessive licking of his paws. If a dog licks his paws enough, his saliva will stain his fur a rusty color and you will wonder if he's irritated himself bloody. We've been giving Prince Kirbsky his pills, and we've been giving him his medicated baths. We tried soothing him with aloe gel, but he thought that was delicious and only wanted to lick more. Sometimes we wrap him in a towel so he can't get at his paws, and he understands that this means he's not supposed to lick, and he tries, he really does, but he's just so itchy and he can't help himself. Most of the time I feel sorry for him, but sometimes, the sloshing liquid sound of him licking and licking and licking and licking and licking and licking and licking and licking grosses me out and I wonder if he'd rather just be put out of his misery.

So we went to the vet for another "for the love of Mike can't you people do anything about this" visit. After considering our options, we are putting him on a food trial to see if he has a food allergy. Now he gets special prescription hypoallergenic food. So this is what he gets, and nothing else. No licking the bowl after the humans have ice cream. No bits of bread crust or bran muffin. No cheese. No rawhide, no greenies, no pig ear, nothing from the dog bakery. (It's a bakery for dogs, not a place where they bake dogs.)


But hey! That was last week! And we go to the vet every week! So what is this week's dog problem?




That is this week's dog problem. That is not supposed to be there. If it were on me, I imagine it would hurt. But it's on GK, and he only complains if Bunny goes out without him. He isn't acting as though it hurts. It's getting a little bigger every day, and sometimes it looks more purple than pink. It is freaking me out, for sure.

So the vet aspirated it with a big needle (again, we assume that hurt, but GK showed no evidence that it hurt) and took some fluid from it, and she made some slides from the juice and sent the slides to the lab so we can find out what it is. Oh, it's coming off, you can believe that! But if we know what it is, that will tell the vet how aggressively she has to treat it and how much tissue she needs to remove. I'm hoping that it's simply a little ingrown hair or infected booboo and not any of the scary things that the vet suggested. But I get to wait a while to find out, and then I get to go back to the vet to have it treated.

As for Friend Tiki, he got his vaccinations and he got weighed. He's been on a diet for ever so long, and he lost two pounds, but his weight has held steady for several months now, despite the fact that we are starving him, sez Tiki. He's trimmer and firmer, and has lost a fair amount of his dewlap, but he seems to want to weigh 28 pounds.