Dogs and barbed wire II

[shakey legs 2]

My springer tangled with a fence opening weekend.  She got a nasty 3 corner tear in her right hind leg on the flap of meat that connects the leg to the stomach.  I had a staple gun but was too chicken to use it so cleaned it out with hydrogen peroxide and hoped for the best.  After a couple of days it was apparent that the wound was not going to close on it's own so off to the vet.  Long story short - an overnight stay, antibiotics, stitches, exam, etc came to $260.  That wasn't so bad but she was put on rest for 10 days so last weekend I was dogless.  Plus hot compresses for 20 minutes each day, clean seapage with peroxide, and she wears one of those plastic Elizabeth collars (shaped like a funnel) to keep her away from the stitches.  I have had to repair the collar several times with duct tape as she keeps banging it and catching it on the door of her dog house.  The stitches come out tomorrow - hooray!!

One of my former dogs had stitches on her chest and I use a child's seatshirt as protection and hunted her with the stitches still in and it worked fairly good except you need to duct tape the bottome to keep it from riding up toward her shoulders when hunting.  Those light weight canvas vests (not neoprene) from Cabelas might be the ticket to protect the chest from wire, cornstalks and willow branches.