We are still struggling to heal Minnie’s ulcerated eye. She won’t eat with the Elizabethan collar (aka “cone of shame”) on. She has done so in the past, but she has forgotten and has now decided it’s impossible and she stands next to her food looking confused.
Until today, we took the cone off her to let her eat, but that meant she was un-coned for 60-90 minutes per day and free to scratch at her eye and rub it on the ground. No wonder it isn’t healing. It should have been obvious this was a bad idea.
I tried putting the food on a flat plate and elevating it on a footstool, about a foot of the ground. Nope.
So I took the cone off her to let her eat while I supervised her from a distance of less than three feet, to be sure she didn’t scratch at the eye.
Because she is a senior dog with kidney disease, we feed her three times a day. Also, I’m giving her eyedrops four times a day. I have gotten very good at giving the dog eyedrops. I feel pleased with myself when I do it quickly and efficiently, less so when I dribble the eyedrops on her face. Notwithstanding those feelings of pride at a job well done this is not a skill I ever wanted to acquire. This is going to be how we do things for another week, then hopefully she’ll be healed up.
This afternoon at the vet, when it was time to bring Minnie home, I just lowered the cone to face-level on the dog and she stuck her head right in it. The vet-tech was impressed. I acted nonchalant as if this was not a surprise to me.
