the trouble with terriers...

...is that they don't know when to quit. We've had issues with Phoebe picking fights with the female border collies in the past, as already chronicled, but there's never been a serious injury. Neither Ezri nor Jadzia have ever been hurt by Phoebe (I'm not sure she CAN hurt anyone, with her ground-down teeth...), and when Jadzia has corrected Phoebe it's ended with a small puncture wound or two. It has been quiet in our house since early November, with very few snarls and no actual fighting. What a pleasant change.

Too bad it didn't last.

On May 9th, Phoebe got herself into a big bowl of trouble yet again, this time requiring an emergency vet visit. Chris had come home early before I did, and put the dogs (plus Jitter, our friends' BC puppy we were watching) loose into the house so he could clean out the kennel. When I came home and went upstairs, I found Phoebe with this wound in her side. As near as I can figure, Jadzia or Ezri got excited and bouncy when I came home (they can hear the bike a block away), Phoebe tried to fun police them, and Jadzia nailed her in the side. However, this time it wasn't a simple puncture wound - instead it looked like her tooth caught in the skin and ripped it for a good couple of inches. Yay. So it was off to the emergency vet for me and Phoebe to get that taken care of, since that's a little too severe to pack with neosporin and hope for the best.

Unfortunately the e-vet was pretty busy that evening, so while they were able to give Phoebe some pain meds right away they weren't able to get to treating her injury until well into the night, so she had to stay the night. She got several stitches along with a drain, with the drain staying in place for five days while we used hot compresses on it twice a day to help promote healing. Additionally she got a course of antibiotics, as well as pain meds, topped off with a cone to keep her from chewing the wound, all to the tune of "too much money" for such an idiotic move. So she's been crated during the day for over two weeks now, obviously with no flyball or other heavy exercise allowed. To add insult to injury, it's been raining a lot and so when we took her out for the first week or so we had to put a coat on her to keep the incision dry. Phoebe was totally thrilled about THAT, believe me.

Happily all seems to be healing up as needed now, which is good since she's a height dog for the tournament next weekend (June 4-5). The drain came out on May 13, and one of my vet tech teammates took her stitches out on May 22. Of course, silly me thought that once the stitches were out she didn't need her cone and put her in the crate without it, so she chewed it up a bit that day. It healed up quickly, and we are now allowing her supervised no-cone time and for the past three days she's shown no inclination to go after the spot. I hope that keeps up, I don't want to deal with a cone at the tournament! It's going to be bad enough explaining what happened to her all weekend long - she's already running in the yard full-bore to play fetch, so I'm not concerned about her ability to run flyball next weekend at all. Phoebe continues to live up to her nickname as "the little tank," although I wish the continuing proofs were a little less expensive!

In positive Phoebe news, she is now ranked 38th of a total of 1460 Jack/Parson Russell Terriers on the NAFA point-scoring list. She's also currently at 118 on the top 250 point-scoring dogs for the 2011 racing year. Not bad for such a little brat.