Dog from space

On a trip to the dog park Friday, Diesel had a bit of a mishap. Running up and down the hills at Granville Dog Park with another dog, he suddenly found himself paw over head, jack-knifed, tumbling to the ground. He got up instantaneously to continue the chase but, when Mark loaded him into his crate in the car, he noticed dirt and grit around his eyes. Once home, and after a short nap, Diesel stumbled into Mark's view with his left eye swollen and mostly closed. The vet fit him into their tight afternoon schedule right away as "you don't want to take chances with the eyes."

After the vet "staining" his eye for a good look and giving it a cleansing rinse, it turned out that there were two superficial scratches on his cornea. The cornea heals quickly if left undisturbed. A week's worth of eye drops and an Elizabethan collar later, this is the result:

He's actually been managing alright. Not completely happy, but able to do what he needs to do – eat, drink, sleep, and snout:



Fortunately, he has a follow-up vet visit on Monday, so if all goes well, it will be taken off. Afterall, the house seems much smaller when your clearance has been reduced and you bump into most things with the plastic cone around your head.

"I don't want to be a space dog."

Mark and I, too, will be grateful as we have been scraped in the back of the legs numerous times this weekend by the plastic cone. We never realized how closely Diesel follows us around the house until we saw the dents in our shins. ;)