Monday, March 10, 2008

Another whirlwind vacation!

We should have known it was going to be bad when first thing Sunday morning our coffee carafe exploded sending shards of glass throughout the kitchen and destroying the last few cups of coffee. Not good to start a vacation low on coffee. Intent to start our vacation we left the shattered remains in the sink...
The ride down was uneventful and it only got warmer out the further south we drove. By the time we got to Lake of the Ozarks (3 hours south of Kirksville) it was 65 and sunny, perfect camping weather!
We got camp fully set up and were headed out on our first (& only) hike by 4pm. The trail along the bluffs above the lake was gorgeous and there was little wind. We hiked 1.5 miles only to realize the trail brought us directly back to our campsite. We turned back around and hiked back to the car. On our way back Lucy was hunting whatever moved and found a log quite interesting:

After running to town to pick up some firewood (apparently nothing in the State Park is open on Sundays...) we came back to camp to relax and fix dinner. Waiting for the fire to warm up we took Lucy down to the lake (10yds away) and threw her stick a few times. We noticed her holding up her left front paw but in her excitement she didn't seem to favor it much.
During supper we noticed her licking her paw a lot and got up to take a look. She had nearly torn her dew claw off and the gouge was so deep you could see the muscle. We made a make shift bandage (McGuyver style) from a sock, a bandaid, a baggie, and the tie from our tent. This bandage lasted until she ran on it and shredded the baggie necessitating a quick run to town for antibiotic spray, proper bandages and tape. Here's a video of Lucy clomping along shortly before the baggie got destroyed. (the song is from Jackson's toy pony, coincidentally Michelle's favorite song)

With Lucy bandaged and drugged (we never hike without puppy pain relief) we reassessed our trip and decided that our hiking trip wouldn't be much fun without the hiking part. We had the car repacked less than 20 hours after we arrived.
We removed Lucy's bandage when we got home and the wound had closed. We applied some antibiotic ointment and rebandaged her. We'll watch her pretty close the next few days for signs of infection and increased pain but all in all our patient is doing quite well. Linus is pretty jealous of the extra attention she's received but it's good for him not to be the center of attention all the time.
Here are some pictures of our trip, hope you enjoy them!

We're not quite sure what we're going to do the next few days but it won't be hiking with the dogs!

1 comment:

Gatfly said...

Beautiful - did you have the campground all to yourselves? Too bad you had to cut your trip short. Hope Lucy's paw heals up okay!