The diagnosis.

No dislocation. No sprain. And thankfully, not bloat.

Ms Pea had some rashes on her tail and that was what she was moaning about all night. I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. Laugh probably.

Her tail is still limp and hanging down. It's obviously sore and she's not using it. It's swollen near the base and there are some red bumps and lesions in the area with a bit of pus. It's called pyoderma or "pus in the skin". That sounds horrid but Georgia's looks to be just an extremely mild infection.

 In fact, you can hardly see the bumps at all in this picture.

What a cry baby!

This picture below, from the Merck Veterinary Manual link above, is [incredibly] labelled as superficial pyoderma.

I hate to think of what deep pyoderma looks like. Here's a description though -

"The hallmarks of deep pyoderma in dogs are pain, crusting, odor, and exudation of blood and pus. Erythema, swelling, ulcerations, hemorrhagic crusts and bullae, hair loss, and draining tracts with serohemorrhagic or purulent exudate may also be seen."

Good god. I'm very glad that's not what Georgia has!

She's now on anti-inflammatories and antibiotics and has been snoring away all afternoon. I'll also be continuing with her medicated baths this week, with special attention to her tail. She's going to be one unhappy puppy.


While at the vet's...

"I've put on 3 kilos?!!"

"Please PLEASE don't make me go on another diet. I'm sick."

"See? I just lost 20 kilos by putting my paws on the floor."

Thank you to everyone who followed our little story last night as it unfolded. I was very glad for your company!

When your dog gets sick in the middle of the night [not sick enough for an emergency dash, but sick enough to keep you awake] and you have no medical degrees hanging on your wall, you start to google for possibilities and answers.

Here's a condition I found which exactly described the way Georgia's tail was looking. It's called many things including cold tail or limber tail, and might be of interest to those of you who live in Very Cold Places and whose dogs like to go swimming in icy ponds. [You know who you are!]

Interestingly, although it's supposed to be a fairly obscure condition, our vet knew what it was and brought it up himself when he saw Georgia's tail. He'd apparently come across some cases while he was working in the UK.

There you go. Live and learn.

I'm looking forward to a nice peaceful night tonight. I hope you and your pups have one too :) x

Strange night.

It's just past 4 in the morning.

I've been up since one-ish. Georgia's been really restless.

After more than a week of grey skies and rain, it was suddenly very hot and muggy yesterday. We had to turn on the air conditioning to cool the house down and to keep the mosquitoes away. They're swarming despite the bug spray, mosquito coils and citronella we've been burning.

I think there's something wrong with Georgia. I thought it might be the air conditioning in the bedroom. She's not great with cold. She's been walking in and out of the bedroom, going down stairs and back up again. I checked out back, to see if maybe she had a bad tummy, but couldn't see or smell anything.

I decided she was just probably feeling the effects of yesterday's heat or not liking the air conditioning. Then, at 3 something, she started crying.

I found her at the top of the stairs.

Her tail was hanging down and looking really limp, almost between her legs. She let me palpate it. It's definitely sensitive around the base. I've run my hands all over her body, looked into her ears and spread her toes to check for ticks. In this heat, that's always a possibility. Maybe she ate something bad. She picked up some buns in the bushes at Elkington the day before yesterday. I hope it wasn't baited food.

All sorts of bad thoughts are going through my head at the moment.

I was sitting in the guest room with her when I started writing this, but I'm downstairs now because she's moving about again and occasionally whining.

It's almost 5 now. I've been googling pain at base of tail, limp tail, problems in the anal or rump area.

I can't wait for the vet to open at 8.

Why dogs love who they love.

I don't know the answer. Do you?

On Saturday, Kristine posed an interesting question on her blog - if you could ask your dog just 1 thing and he was granted the power to reply, what would it be?

If you check my response in the comments section, and The Cushion's, I think it'll become obvious why Georgia's favourite human is him, and not me. [The question must have been top of his mind because he blurted it out almost immediately.]

So our dog doesn't love me as much as she does The Other Half. It's okay. No sympathy or denials required. I was going to count all the votes from the last post, biased or not ;) for fun.

But, my own observations are enough.

I've heard from girlfriends that their girldogs prefer their other halves too. They're all daddy's girls apparently. Could this be true? Is there some kind of scientific evidence of this phenomenon? Or are we just a bunch of failed disappointed dog owners clutching at straws?

Anyway, I'm hoping it's as simple as that. And not that Georgia's canine instincts tell her I'm A Really Bad Person.

The Other Half often tells Georgia, in that barf-worthy baby voice he reserves only for dogs, "You'll always be my girl, Jaw-Jah!"

To which I can only respond with a bright smile on my face, "It's okay, Georgia! You don't have to love me! You just have to love someone."

And I mean that, from the bottom of my [ever so slightly sad and bitter] heart.

*

Here are the promised pictures from Saturday's phở lunch, which The Cushion insists I include, no doubt as proof of his devotion.

"Are you sure you didn't hide any of my beef under the noodles?"

*

Of course [not to sound like a sour grape], there is some debate that dogs actually love at all. This might not be the most appropriate sentiment to include in a dogblog read mostly by doglovers but, as you can tell, I'm not at all an·thro·po·mor·phic an(t)-thrə-pə-ˈmȯr-fik

* Your dog does not love you and other cold-nosed truths.

And here's a somewhat related topic -

* Why people love dogs.

An excerpt :

"Over thousands of years of living with humans, dogs have become wily and transfixing sidekicks with the particularly appealing characteristic of being unable to speak. We are therefore free to fill in the blanks with what we need to hear. (What the dog may really be telling us, much of the time, is, "Feed me.")"

"Are you sure you didn't hide any of my beef under the noodles?"    "Are you going to feed me?"

"It's okay. You can let go now."

On yet another somewhat related topic, Pamela asked this question, also over the weekend  - does loving dogs automatically qualify a person for sainthood? [She didn't use those exact words.]

She included a riveting video of Hitler and his [apparently beloved] dog, Blondi. I guess that sort of answers the question.