The Three Griffskateers – A Dog’s Life

• Posted by kid dynamite
• on May 31st, 2012

Mrs. Dynamite got a call last week from the National Brussels Griffon Rescue’s Northeast coordinator:  she had a dog that needed a foster home, even just on a very short term basis until she could pick him up.

“No matter what happens, we can NOT keep this dog.  You have to be the strong one,” Mrs. Dynamite prepped me, knowing full well that we suck at fostering – that’s how we ended up with Mr. Griffey, after all:  we failed fostering and just kept him.

I was going to Vegas this past weekend, of course, so Mrs. Dynamite arranged to meet Benny’s owner in Vermont, halfway between her house and ours, to take Benny.   I got the report on Friday afternoon that 8 year old Benny was super sweet, but that Oscar and Mr. Griffey weren’t too happy with their new housemate:  Oscar was trying to hump him (odd, since Oscar normally doesn’t care about displaying his dominance) and Griffey was snapping at Benny whenever Benny got too close to Mrs. Dynamite’s prime lap-side spot that Griffey owns.

But we figured things would work themselves out soon enough.  Not quite…

On Saturday afternoon when I checked in with the homestead,  I got the update:  Benny had been peeing blood, and Mrs. Dynamite managed to get a Saturday morning vet appointment.  They found that Benny had a bladder full of stones, with two lodged in his urethra, and scheduled him for surgery Tuesday morning.  If, in the meantime, he stopped urinating, she’d have to bring him in for emergency surgery.

Oy vey.   Mrs. Dynamite figured that this was why Benny was having a tough time playing with Oscar and Mr. G – he simply felt terrible and wasn’t up to rumbling with them.  They did make a good looking pack, though:

 

(warning: frank discussion of Benny’s surgical wounds follows)

 

 

So Benny had his surgery on Monday, and Mrs. Dynamite picked him up on Tuesday morning, after a long phone chat with the vet, who explained to us that by the time they got to surgery, less than 72 hours after his initial x-ray, he now had 5 stones (not two) lodged in his urethra.   The vet was unable to flush the stones back into the bladder, so he had to make an additional incision at the base of Benny’s urethra to remove those stones.   This is in addition to the 4 inch incision to remove the stones in the bladder.    It’s the urethral incision that’s a mess, though – see, the Vet says that this kind of incision heals best if it’s left “open,” otherwise scar tissue is excessive and restricts the flow of urine.    It’s got a few sutures to hold it together, but it’s not sutured tightly at all, and basically, Benny is a walking blood sprinkler.  He’s dripping blood everywhere he goes and every time he moves.  When he pees, blood sprays out of the wound at the base of his penis and coats his legs, requiring a little hosing off.   We are hoping that this will only last a few days, as the vet had explained, until the wound starts to heal.

This morning, Benny’s “open” wound opened up as we were trying to get him out of bed for a 6am walk, and by the time we got it under control our bedroom was bloodier than Bigfoot Silva’s face after the Cain Velasquez fight.  Fortunately, Mrs. Dynamite is a stain removing ninja, and she somehow managed to salvage everything.

We are fortunate that we are able to be home with Benny at all times as he heals – and even then it’s like a full time job trying to keep the poor dog from accidentally staining our entire house with blood drops.  We have towels and pee-pads duct-taped over the couch, and Benny is on canine Vicodin for pain mediation.  The vet explained that if Benny started “talking” too much, that would be a sign that we need to cut back on his drugs – but that hasn’t happened yet.  He does snore like a bulldozer, however.

Amazingly, even the vet who did Benny’s surgery was able to observe how sweet a dog Benny is – under the worst of circumstances, he’s still super friendly and affectionate.

The vet techs said the same when Mrs. Dynamite went to pick Benny up.   I had noticed this right away on my brief meeting with Benny before his surgery.   I was somewhat worried that his first introduction to me would be when I came home at 1am Monday, returning from Vegas, where it would essentially be like I was an intruder breaking into the bedroom from his point of view.   While Oscar and Griffey sounded the alarm as they are wont to do, Benny had no issues with me – he just ambled over to the side of the bed, offered me some kisses, and plopped down to let me rub his belly.   Since he had surgery the next morning, Mrs. Dynamite forbade me from moving him when he took my spot in the bed, and I had to sleep on top of the covers freezing my balls off so that Benny could be comfortable in my normal spot…

Anyway, the next few weeks will be a little bit crazy in the Dynamite household as we try to get Benny healed up and back on his feet.    We’ll see if Mrs. Dynamite and I fail fostering again and keep Benny – we’ve sworn not to, but we are both suckers for a cute dog who gets along with ours…

If any readers would like to make a donation to the National Brussels Griffon Rescue, they can do so by clicking here.

stay tuned.

-KD

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