The pups and I went next door last night to hang out with the neighbors (who now read my blog! HI NEIGHBORS!) and their dogs which involved the humans sitting around their little campfire drinking beers and hearing stories of my one neighbor’s hitchhiking adventures (which I totally said I was going to blog about as my own, which, if you know me, is hilarious to think about me hitchhiking) while the dogs ate stuff they found on the ground. All was well and good until I went inside their house to use the facilities, and their resident dog, who is territorial, did NOT like the idea of Boris coming inside with me, and put out the smack-down. Two-point-five beers makes my handling of this situation one of nonchalance and matter-of-factness. I would like it noted that I did not scream like a protective mama bear, but simply pulled at Boris’s back legs and shoved him outside. If I had imbibed, say, only one-point-five beers I may have been more quick to realize that the dogs were BLEEDING, something my astute neighbor noticed on his dog right away in the light of the small campfire, while I failed to see it when INSIDE WITH THE AID OF ELECTRICITY. Being the fantastic pet-owner that I am, it would be several more minutes before I realized that Boris was not anywhere near us, but instead hovering by the gate to the area Away From Here. So I did a brief pass over Boris with my hands and determined that he may have a cut on his ear, and called the night over for us.

When I got home, I saw that my arms, hands, and clothes were streaked with blood. The ear? Apparently bleeds a lot. And the ear on a creature who doesn’t understand “holding still” rather than shaking his head repeatedly because we keep touching his ear? Doesn’t really have a chance to clot. If you want a fun late-night Saturday game, you and your partner get drunk and then try to hold a washcloth/gauze/ice cube to your dog’s ear to stop it from bleeding. Bonus points for one of you growing increasingly more hysterical about the fact that the ear won’t stop bleeding and alternately freaking out that your dog is going to die from blood loss and the fact that your kitchen floor looks like a hospital operating room. We spent the next hour or two doing the following: trying to apply pressure to the ear, removing the washcloth/gauze/whatever upon seeing the bleeding was slowing down, watching Boris shake his head, seeing blood splatter everywhere as he reopened the cut, freaking out, reapplying pressure, lather, rinse, repeat. (Helpful tip: Even the most intense and strong dog like Boris can be convinced to hold still while you’re squeezing his injured ear if he’s fed a steady supply of peanut butter. I started out just giving him fingerfulls of it – Vinnie as well, of course; he can’t be left out just because he was happily chewing a bone while the fight went down! – and then just left the open jar on the floor for him to go to town while we held the 87th paper towel to his bloody ear. I feel compelled to mention that the dogs have THEIR OWN jar of peanut butter, stored separately from the Human Peanut Butter so letting him eat out of the jar shouldn’t gross you out [Mom].)

I called an emergency animal hospital to see if they could give us any pointers, and basically got the catch-all “well, it’s best if you bring him in,” including descriptions of sutures and cauterizations and ears never healing otherwise, and as I’m mentally running through all of our accounts, trying to figure out if we could piece together the money for an emergency vet visit or who we could call at midnight to borrow money from, Mr. Zoo is patiently holding gauze to Boris’s ear while we brainstorm some kind of head-wrap that we could fashion out of household items to prevent the cut from being reopened every time he moved. Eventually we gave him a benadryl to hopefully knock him out so he would be able to rest/not shake his head and allow the cut to clot. I slathered his ear with cornstarch in the hopes it would help stop the bleeding. We took him up to bed and gave him the prime spot on the human bed. Then we gave him another benadryl dipped in peanut butter. Then we hovered over him watching him doze off, discussing which one of us would sleep on the bed with him since we didn’t want to move him when the other came to bed, afraid that it would startle him and cause him to shake his head and reopen the wound again. I agreed to let Mr. Zoo sleep downstairs if he promised to come upstairs and check on Boris when he got up in the night, as he is wont to do when mother nature calls. For the first time in forever, I didn’t put in my earplugs when I went to sleep so I could hear Boris if he needed me. Which means that I heard Boris every time he rolled over, licked his paws, sighed, etc., and each time I would jolt up, turn on the light, inspect his ear, then turn off the light and roll over to try to sleep. Every time Mr. Zoo would come in to check on us, I would bolt up, ask “IS EVERYTHING OKAY?” and slump back over once assured that all seemed fine. At around 4 or 5 in the morning I heard Boris shake his head and my heart got stuck in my throat as I reached for the light, wondering if I was going to find both of us and the bed covering in blood spatters. Don’t let anyone tell you I can’t think of the worst case scenario even in my exhaustion!

I’m happy to report that all seems fine with The Ear. No more blood, just crusty cornstarch-y grossness and a freaked out Zoo whenever he shakes his head. Oh, and tired. Very tired. Hopefully my neighbor dog fared better with his battle wound!