Just call me Florence Nightingale

Warning: before you read any further, there are some photos of our foster dog Teddy after his surgery that I'm posting that might be upsetting to you.

Usually on this blog I write about the rewarding and mostly silly antics of our adorable foster hounds. There are so many quirky and funny stories that happen on a daily basis in the house, that it's just a normal day in Casa-de-Pocket when your dog decides to eat a tampon or plumbers putty.

I know most of you have deduced that our return foster dog, Teddy, has one eye. He was born blind in one eye because of a birth defect that made his one eye ball itty-bitty. For years the vets have told us (and his previous owners) that it was not a good idea to sew his eye shut because he has tear ducts and it is better if his eye can flush debris out on it's own.

I have not gone into the details of what happened as soon as Teddy was surrendered from his previous owners but let's just say that his eye was seriously infected, among many other things. In the few weeks that we have had him, it has never cleared up totally and the vet decided to go ahead and remove the eye this afternoon at the same time of his dental cleaning.

I called around 1:00 pm and they had mentioned that the surgery had just ended (3 HOURS!) His teeth were ok but they had to extract one tooth because it looked like there had been some sort of blunt force trauma to his mouth which caused his tooth to crack and then bleed inside the crack. This caused his root to become extremely infected and painful. While they couldn't tell me how long ago it happened to be sure, they did think that due to the extensive decay that it must have happened quite some time ago. They were also successful in removing the tiny eye ball and sewing his eye shut.

So we go and pick him up around 4:30 and the vet tech is telling us how to ice pack his eye and how to clean the oozing blood that seemed to be coming from his tear duct. Yeah, yeah we know all about it. Another foster dog ended needing her eye removed and we were the family that took care of her through that ordeal. And then the vet tech came back out with Teddy IN HER ARMS because he was still so out of it b/c of all the medications. His eye is the size of an orange and his paws are covered in blood. He looks in terrible, terrible shape and i could barely keep my shit togetherlong enough for them to give us the pain pills. Poor Pocket had to hear me crying all the way home about how bad he looked. For whatever reason, i just never mentally prepared myself for seeing him like that. it was a huge shock.

Anyways, he is now laying down in our front room at Pocket's feet oozing a little bit of blood from his eye and his mouth. he doesn't seem to be in pain because he is so snowed from the meds that I'm not sure he even realizes where he is. Pocket took the day off tomorrow and I will be home in the morning after a 2 hour presentation I am in charge of tomorrow at a local hospital. Poor little Teddy.