The Pirate

Recently my older, but smaller, dog had to have a growth on her paw removed. The vet thought it might be cancerous because it was growing at an alarming rate. As usual I was distraught by the idea of having to put my dog under anesthesia because with an older dog it is a very risky thing to do. Luckily she came out of the surgery as if nothing really happened.


The only indication that she had anything wrong with her was that she was dressed in a bootie on her one paw. This was mostly to keep her paw dry but also to keep her from licking her wound. Instead of putting the Elizabethan collar around her head (which we call the lampshade), we thought the bootie would serve the same purpose with less adjustments on her part. And we were right in that thinking because she walked the whole way home from the vet’s office without any complaint.

When she got home though, she moaned a bit. I think the walk home might have been too aggressive. Hearing her in pain made my heart sink. After giving her pain medication though, she eased off into a deep, recovering sleep.

The day after her surgery, she woke up bright and fluffy and pounced off of her bed as though nothing had happened the previous day. As she walked on the hardwood floor, there was a distinctive ‘tick, tick, tick’ whenever her bootie hit the floor. She had a slight limp due to the difference in spacing between her paw and the bootie. As she went to get her water and had her breakfast, the ticking noise accompanied her. My husband said that she sounded like a peg-legged pirate. Hence he decided to call her ‘the pirate’. Once he called her that to her face, she stared at him as if she were, in fact, the most menacing of pirates.

As the week progressed, we took her bootie off but that didn’t stop my husband from calling her ‘peg-leg’ or ‘pirate’. We thought her scar could use some airing out so we had to put the lampshade on her head to keep her from attacking her paw. Lampshades have a weird way of maximizing dogs’ eyes. Most dogs’ eyes take up their whole sockets (which is what makes them so cute and adorable). However, when a pooch has to wear a collar, it’s as though their eyes take up their whole head. It makes you pity them more. Luckily she didn’t mind having her little halo; she deals with it as best as she can. (Whereas my other dog purposely walks into walls in order to try to get the lampshade off her head.)

A week after the surgery, she had her stitches removed. The biopsy results came back and happily the growth was not cancerous. She just had a proliferation of collagen and connective tissues. As of today, her paw has healed over and you couldn’t tell she had a growth there. Regardless of this incident, she will always be our little pirate. Even if she’s no longer limping, she still stares at us with her menacing mug as if she wants us to walk the plank.