Taffy the Laffy Samoyed Stories
page 18
59. Taff & the Heebie-jeebies Headgear
Well Taff had surgery on his eye two weeks ago, the cataract was removed but he was not able to get a replacement lens put in due to some complications.
He is healing rapidly, we believe his sight is returning, although he will be farsighted we are delighted he can once again see with both eyes.
The cataract in the other eye is very small, has not changed, and is not interfering with his vision but of course we are watching it also.
Taff was issued a clear plastic E-collar to wear to protect that eye, maybe for as long as four weeks, his eye was shaved and so was a spot on his leg and the cone prevents him rubbing the eye or chewing the leg.
Up till now he has been pretty good about the wearing the cone and remarkably good about all the eye drops and meds he has to take several times a day.
That is until 6:30 am this morning, he raced in our bedroom and woke us up, raced through the house violently shaking his head and beating the cone on the floor and anything else he could beat it on, he was out of his mind, panting like a steam engine up a 4% grade, thrashing around like a shark in a feeding frenzy, he left elephant sized wet paw prints all over the floor, he struggled in my grasp and I could hardly hold him.
I grabbed him in a bear hug and Charlie grabbed a flashlight, I ripped the E-collar off him and Charlie checked both eyes to make sure nothing was irritating them, then we checked both his ears and all his teeth, We checked every inch of his skin for a bite but we could not see a single thing that was giving him a heebie-jeebies attack!
I have never seen this boy so frantic, it scared me half to death.
I grabbed a handful of fur and went to scratching him all over, then giving him a deep muscle massage, the second I let go of him he attacked his leg chewing a red spot where he was shaved, In desperation I rubbed it with salve, he licked it off, I rubbed it with baby oil, he licked it off, I rubbed it with fish oil, he licked that off to and I rubbed it with a tangerine, Taff hates all citrus with a passion but he licked that off too! Then he proceeded to try and roll on that eye.
That's it, time for the sedative, one half a pill will put him down for eight hours, so I gave him a quarter of one and in half an hour he was mellow as a wino on Mad Dog hahaha.
I believe he just had a "recovery & itchy hair" attack, he has not been allowed to walk, chew bones, play in his splashie pond, run, dig, lick himself, bark, shake his head or jump for two weeks, I think he just went the dog equivalent of postal!
This is also the longest he has ever been clean in two years as he was groomed just before surgery, so I think the clean is literally making his skin crawl hahaha.
We managed to keep his cone off for about 2 hours while we watched him like a hawk and continued to rub and massage him, I gave him 3 of his chew bones to gnaw on as a diversion and he still tried to lick that leg and roll that eye even punchy as he was, so I put the cone back on, rubbed the leg with oil and took him out in his pen where he is sound asleep in the fresh spring air in the middle of his carpet.
I am thinking while he is asleep I will glue some of his shed hair back on with super glue, other than that I haven't a clue what to do, poor hairless itchy boy.
60.Taff & the Menacing Mineral Mash
I am here to tell you it has been a monumental fete to keep Taff restrained while the eye healed he had surgery on.
We have gradually allowed him to resume normal activities with the exception of tug of war and head shaking which are banned forever.
I have also been restrictive of big bone chewing which was one of Taff's favorite pastimes.
We did allow him to dig in his diggie hole and splash a little in his splashie pond although with a lot less water than before.
So we have been pretty happy with his progress and relieved he is doing so well, until last night and this morning's mad dash to the vets!
Late yesterday afternoon I noticed that Taff seemed to have soft stools, as the evening wore on he got progressively worse, I ended up getting up every hour and letting him outside as he developed sever diarrhea through the wee hours of the morning.
First thing this morning I called the vets as it was like water. I was afraid to try and stop it and afraid to not to, what to do?
They squeezed me in and I took along two stool samples, he was checked from head to toe and other than VERY loose bowels he is in excellent shape, perky and happy, just pooping like mad, not eating and hardly drinking at all which concerned me greatly.
After much conversation and upon closer exam of the loose stools it appear that Taff had traded big chew bones for large lumps of coal... i.e. almost pure carbon as used in chemical detox! (Activated carbon prevents absorption by the gastrointestinal tract)
This was further supplemented by a large liquid chlorophyll flavored chew bone, (given as a treat by a well meaning friend) which I took off him and pitched but not before he had licked a lot on it, buried it, dug it back up out of the moist earth and possible was able to eat a small hunk now that it was soft. Here is what I found on that (Liquid Chlorophyll is another detoxifier It is an intestinal, internal and local antiseptic, and it inhibits bacterial growth), whoo hoo kill them all!
All the above was topped off by a few mouthfuls of grass and weeds!
So what we have is a Sammie with dirty paws, a filthy face, a poopy behind and insides clean enough and sterile enough to serve as an operating room!
His menacing mineral mash had completely wiped out, vomited up and pooped out the wiggly-gigglies in his gut that are required to digest food of any kind in the blink of an eye!
Several large denomination dollar bills, a 5 day prescription, along with off the shelf medicine, half a plate of specially prepared lean ground beef, one half a powdered sugar donut, plus a large amount of clean water later, The Mad Chemist Taff is sound asleep on the floor and appears to be good as new!
We are to watch him for the next couple days to see that he does not go into a funk or refuse food or refuse water.
He might be OK on the food and water, but the funk will kick in when I have dad bury that diggie hole in two tons of veggies with the bobcat, you want to talk toxic, Taff hates veggies!
I have determined it is just cheaper to feed him money that take him to the vets, so I am going to supplement his kibble with $50 bills for fiber. The girl who does the stool samples will be happy with that I'm sure:)
This dog has had more stool samples run than a professional race horse!
And what does the vet say, pretty much boys will be boys, he is sure Taff did not realize it would make him sick, he just probably liked the sound of it crunching in his mouth, he topped that off with "he likes me" as Taff gave his version of a kiss-shoving his nose in the side of his cheek!
Stay tuned, who knows what he will think up next in an attempt to make the vet clinic his private time-share summer home:) hahaha lol mfb.
61.Taff & the Slimy Slither
It has been hotter than a steak on a grill here, so I have been walking Taff with the neighbors early in the morning, this morning they didn't show so we went by ourselves which is a good thing as they both would have had a stroke!
We're walking down the road and the weeds are waist high on both sides except for a narrow mowed strip.
Unlike his usual self Taff is toddling along and sniffing the ground all over like a herd of Buffalo just passed, on the way back he was actually lagging way behind and I told him to come on.
Suddenly he bounded by me like a race car, did a 45 degree turn and pounced in the high weeds on the uphill side like a lightening strike, going clear to the end of his 30 foot lead and almost pulling my arm out of my socket!
I hear this LOUD crashing and panic, don't let it be a skunk, out of the tall weeds comes Taff thrashing like a fish out of water, wrapped completely around his head and ruff is the biggest SNAKE I ever saw...... OMG!!!!!! TAFFFFFFFYYYyyyyyy!!!
Now Taff is frantically shaking his head, this is the very thing the eye doctor direly warned me about never to let him do since his cataract surgery, I am in a complete state of panic, the snake has his head inches from Taff's repaired eye, Taff is flinging it up and down and back and forth, the snake's tail is whipping in the air like a bull whip and slamming on the road with a loud crack each time Taff shook it!
I run clear to the end of his lead and start yelling at the top of my lungs- DROP IT- STOP SHAKING (Taff actually stopped and the snake tried to bite his eye- I scream louder- KILL IT-DROP IT- STOP SHAKING- SHAKE IT'S BRAINS OUT- GET THAT THING OFF YOUR HEAD RIGHT NOW!
Taff is totally ignoring me as the snake wraps it self around his head tighter and I can hardly see his face, I have no idea what kind of snake it is, I am 30 feet away without my glasses but I can make out the big diamonds on it's back, now if you think for a second I am going to get closer to see the head and/or ask for ID to see if it is poisonous you are sorely misinformed about my feelings for snakes!
If I had been Eve in the biblical garden Adam would have come home to the first redneck B-B-Q and nice new belt and hatband, try this- it tastes like chicken, forget the fruit it will kill ya!
Now I don't have the camera but I'm trying to memorize what this snake looks like and the diamonds are making me nervous, also the thing is as big around as my leg and about 75 feet long, well that's what it looked like to me, kinda like looking down a 22 gun barrel and guessing the caliber- CANNON it was a CANNON, I'm telling ya!
At a total loss as to what to do I break into a flat out run down the road dragging Taff shaking his head and the snake behind me, I keep jerking on his long lead, trust me when being followed by a snake wrapped dog I can run VERY VERY fast, it was my intention to just drag him and the snake back here to DAD, he is way past due to handle a Taff stunt believe me!
OK, I keep Jerking on Taff's lead and looking back over my shoulder, suddenly Taff drops the snake, I leap ahead like a racehorse out of the gate at the Kentucky Derby, Taff digs in his big paws and tries to stop me, it was a tug of war with the slithering, dizzy, slimy snake in between us slowly uncoiling completely across the road, looked like a fire hose, Taff cleared the snake in one leap, then it lifted it's head just as I got Taff about 10 feet away from it and I lost all sense of sanity, I poured on the coals and screamed at the top of my lungs, you just stay right there bubba I'll be back with my big truck and flatten you all over the highway!
Taff is literally dragging his claws in the blacktop leaving 1/2 inch gouges and whining, jerking his lead as hard as he can, now Taff is strong but I had LOTS of adrenalin on my side and a rearing black ANACONDA to help things along, I have no idea how fast a snake can move but trust me I can move faster, even dragging Taff.
Down the road I race and Taff finally decided to catch up, he is panting with tongue lolling out and I have heart arrest just sure he has been bitten and going in to death throes, forgetting the fact we have just had a full blown, muscle ripping tug of war for 3/4 of a mile in the humid air.
I am beyond hysterical, I burst into the house chugging like a steam engine, I race over to Charlie and between lung ripping gasps tell him to look up, diamond back rattlers, black snakes, copperheads, anacondas, any name snake I can think of, get the Google images up NOW I scream at him!
I am washing Taff's eye out with Saline, I am washing his whole face with it to get the snake germs off, I am checking every inch of his face and neck and shoulders for bite marks, Taff is into wrestle mode fighting me, I pin him to the floor and scream at him you stupid idiot what were you thinking, that snake could have killed you, even if it wasn't poisonous it could have BIT YOUR EYE OUT!
Charlie is calm as still water, I am rolling on the floor with Taff screaming and he is growling and mouthing me, white fur is flying all over the place as I pull out hunks to see if he is bite somewhere.
Charlie is assuring me if the snake had bit him Taff would have cried out, and he is also convinced by the description it was a plain old black snake, not much of a bite but they are a constrictor, he brings up some pictures, sure enough that is what it was. However he doubted my description of it size-OH YEA well you just go down there and look at the slime trial clear across the road, I'm tellin ya, it was GIGANTIC, I couldn't see Taff's face at all, it was a nightmare, I don't even know how he could breath! Makes my skin crawl just to type this!
Then I scream even louder at Taff: seeeee a CONSTRICTOR it could have cut off the blood to your eye, it could have squeezed you so tight it would have popped BOTH eyes out, what were you thinking, hold still let me check you teeth, eeewwww snake germs in your mouth, I flush it with saline too.
I finally managed to convince myself Taff has no bit marks or snake germs left on him anywhere and apparently the violent head shaking has not hurt his optic nerve as he is giving me the EVIL eye hahaha.
This is NOT what we had in mind when we paid a small fortune to get his eye fixed!
I have no idea how he knew that snake was there, went airborne pouncing 30 feet through the thick brush and grabbed it with one strike, OBVIOUSLY his eyes and ears both work well.
That's it with the long lead, till Dad bobcats all the hillsides around for 5 miles.
I am also going to send the "armed to the teeth" neighbors out to find it, you know what they say about how dangerous a wounded buffalo is, snakes can't be no different !hahaha mfb