Aye, my poor little dog.

Border collie Kiva and big mutt Steve got into a scrap tonight. My dogs are constantly wrestling and play-fighting and it's extremely rare for it to get out of hand, and when it does, it's usually over food. This evening they were playing in the yard, playing in their kiddy pool, running, being dogly dogs, and they started wrestling and chasing each other like always and I noticed it was getting a little heated and hollered at them to leave off each other, which they did. Then just a bit later, when I was inside looking at my pictures, I noticed the side of Kiva's head was sticky and that she was holding her ear funny. I took her in the bathroom and realized her whole ear was full of blood. She cried when I tried to clean it out and it was horrible--I hate it when my lil' dogs are in any pain, it's just awful. I got it cleaned out as best I could but couldn't really tell how bad it was because the blood was coming from deep inside her ear. I got M to hold her still and was able to sort of hold her ear up to the light in a way that allowed me to see into it. I wish I could erase what I saw. There's a tendon inside her ear that has been torn out from under the skin and completely severed in half. I just can't even imagine how badly that must hurt. We gave her one of the pain pills she had from when she sprained her back leg, and she's been moping around all doped this evening, wanting to be right near me. She can't lay on her right side because when she puts her head down on the carpet it hurts her ear. I tried to put some neosporin in it to at least prevent infection until I can get her to the vet tomorrow morning. Why oh why do these things always happen on a Sunday night when the vet is closed? Every time she shakes her head, she leaves a little spray of blood behind. I don't really know what to do other than to try to keep it clean and make sure she's not in too much discomfort. I'm guessing the pain pill had some effect, because she did eat some dinner a little while ago and I know when I'm in a lot of pain I don't eat and it's probably the same for dogs. I don't know what they're going to be able to do about it at the vet, really--she has a severe heart murmur and she can't be sedated for any kind of surgery because it could kill her. I'm hoping they can maybe give me some sort of dog-safe topical stuff to put on it and keep it from getting infected. I don't know how it managed to happen; I'm guessing that since when Steve wrestles with Kiva or Nancy he likes to rear up with his front feet in the air, he must have got her with one of his toenails. I don't see how he could have done that with his teeth. It's way down inside her ear.

My poor bebe. :(

I didn't go with my parents to get the beagles because I got a whopping headache and spent most of the day in bed. The heat has been pretty ridiculous. Tomorrow it's supposed to be 98 F. Maybe that's not hot for, say, Arizona, but for Cincinnati, it's nearly unbearable since we've got the humidity and smog and river crud. I've been in 115 F heat before in Nevada and that was a lot easier to handle than 95 in Cincinnati.

I'm worried about my poor lil' dog...I wonder if she will ever be able to hold her ear up again, like in the pic. I hope that it heals quickly and easily and that it doesn't hurt her.

Oy. It's hard to be dog parent sometimes.