World's Worst Mom

Me. I feel like the world's worst dog mom.


You all know my problem child, Bailey. She has a totally different personality than any of her siblings. Bailey is a hunter. She spends all her outdoor time hunting. She has caught a bird, several lizards, a couple frogs, a squirrel and a skunk. She's always the last one inside and we often have to leash her to persuade her to leave her hunt and join us indoors.

Friday morning Rob left early for a business meeting. I got up, started a pot of coffee, gave the dogs their meds and took everyone outside. The problem started when it was time to go back in.


Everyone came except Bailey. I left them all in the garage and went out with a leash to get Bailey who was hunting in the weeds around the rock pile. When I leashed her and started toward the house, I saw that she had been in some burrs. Bailey can find burrs that no one else can find. Rob and I pull the plants out and destroy them, but Bailey will find more. All summer I've been pulling burrs out of her coat.


Friday she had burrs in both front legs, her chest, her face and one ear.

I went inside and got a comb and scissors and started removing the burrs. I got the ones in her chest and the side of her face. Her ear was folded back with a big bunch of burrs wrapped around it. I started cutting them away when she jerked to look at something.


I continued working, then noticed that I had a hand full of blood. Bailey hadn't made a sound, but my hand and arm were covered with blood and it was running down her neck and chest. I had cut her ear flap.



I know from personal experience that ears have a lot of tiny blood vessels close to the surface and they bleed like crazy. A barber cut my earlobe once and I thought it would never stop bleeding. I led Bailey into the garage, snarled at the other dogs to get back and they knew from my tone of voice that they'd better do it. I grabbed the styptic powder and poured it on the cut. The bleeding stopped.

I put Bailey in her crate, took care of the other dogs, then went back to check on her. Since the bleeding seemed to have stopped, I put her in the doggy bathtub and washed the blood out of her coat. Then I washed her ear with Betadine solution. I got a good look at the cut. She has a little notch in her ear flap.

I coated the cut liberally with antibiotic ointment, gave her a Rimadyl for pain and put her back in her crate with several cookies.

I wanted a cup of coffee badly, but since I looked like an accident victim, I headed for the shower instead. Rob returned home while I was in the shower. I told him about the incident, so he changed into old clothes and we went to check on Bailey. She was fine, happy to see us. We took her outside and she bounced around. That afternoon the cut began to bleed again, so we repeated the steps I'd taken earlier.

Bailey spent the weekend in solitary in her crate. She enjoyed it because she got lots of individual attention. On Saturday we got a good look at the cut and decided she didn't need stitches. We've been coating it with antibiotic ointment each day.


Bailey is doing well today and got to rejoin her sisters for play. They sniffed her ear, then walked away. The cut appears to be healing well, but I can't help feeling like a really bad mom to have hurt my pup. She knows I would never intentionally hurt her, but I felt crummy all weekend.