Yammering on Health Care

The humans are still yammering on health care. They don't really seem to know what to do about it. So I thought I'd bark in with a few suggestions:

Have you tried licking it?

When I have a bruise, cut or other medical problem, I lick it.

Licking it seems to help.

You humans have pathetically small tongues; So maybe you can't get a full lick in. In which case, I guess, you have a pretty bad problem.

Anyway, licking it is my suggestion. I think licking would help a lot.

My name is Coco. I am a dog, and I approve this message.

Reluctant Seeing Eye Dog

This is scary.

My primary human is going under the knife today for cataract surgery. It is scary because if the doctor sneezes at the wrong time, then yours truly will be pressed into service as a seeing-eye-dog.

Seeing-eye-dogs are among the hardest workers of the canine family. Such dogs not only have to worry about themselves, but about the humans in the lead.

A good seeing-eye-dog spends their day fetching items for the blind human (fetching sounds fun … but blind people don't throw the Frisbee all that far, and my favorite part of fetch is running with abandon).

The hardest part of being a seeing-eye-dog is that dog is no longer free to aimlessly follow the intriguing smells that nature offers.

As a chocolate lab, I am partial to jumping into freezing cold ponds in the dead of winter. Were I pressed into service as a seeing-eye-dog, I would get demerits for leading my human into a freezing cold pond.

Hoping to avoid service as a seeing-eye-dog, I ask my readers to give their doggie prayers for a successful operation.

Purple Bandage

As if the shoes weren't bad enough; my humans then decided to wrap my paw in a purple bandage.

I have an instinct for this type of thing and my instinct says that the cure for sore paw is to lick and chew at the sore paw.

Blowing Out a Paw

Things are not going well.

I blew out my right rear paw and am running on a spare.

Although I really wanted to play fetch today, I couldn't because my rear paw was all sore and raw. It is probably the toxic combination of salt on the road, the freezing cutting snow and a tendency to lick wounds until they get worse.

My humans rushed me off to PETsMART where they bought doggie booties and gauss to make a temporary bandage. We will see how I do over the weekend. If the sore gets worse, it will be off to the vet on Monday.

Here are some pictures. Click for larger view: