Cone Head

About a month ago, my dog Foxy got bitten by some kind of bug. It produced an allergic reaction all over her tummy and legs that made her itch like crazy. In her attempts to relieve her itching, she bit and chewed off parts of her fur and had actually made herself bleed with all the itching and chewing. It was horrible to see.

We rushed her to the vet where she was given a cortisone injection to relieve the need for itching. She was given a lot of medicine to alleviate the need to itch and to ensure that her open wounds would heal. All of this would have been fine. But she was also given a cone to wear around her head to keep her from continuing to bite at her wounds.
For a while I wasn’t even sure what was worse, seeing her bite her wounds raw or watching her being frustrated with a cone on her head. For the first day, she attempted everything imaginable to remove the cone. She put her face on the floor which resulted in a sight that looked like a lampshade on the floor with a curved fuzzy animal bending out of it. She pawed at the end of the cone to try to pull it off. No luck. She walked into trees with the side of the cone in hopes that it would just bounce right off. She used a hydrant to pull on the string that kept the cone tied to her neck. Every attempt was foiled.

She finally got used to it – as much as she could be, I guess. She walked around dejected and sad – as if she was being punished. We kept encouraging her that it was temporary and that it was so she wouldn’t have to go to the vet again (the visit to the vet alone caused an insane amount of panic in her which broke my heart as well). She just sat with her tummy on the floor and the cone around her head and gave us sad eyes. An occasional sigh could be heard emanating from the cone. She was so depressed.

After cleaning up all the food that got trapped in her cone and clipping all the matted hair around her face due to the saliva and drool that collected in the cone at night, I decided to give her a chance. The chance came when I was trying to drive my car and she kept hitting me with the cone…it was time to remove the cone.

When it was pulled off her head, she was ecstatic! She started wagging her tail again. She gave me ‘paw’. She kissed my hand and face to show her appreciation. The smile returned to my doggy’s face. All this begs the question – isn’t there a better way to get dogs to not bite themselves?