Oskar's Comfort

On our walk last weekend, I noticed that Oskar kind of tripped a couple of times. I wondered if perhaps his toenails needed clipping. This time of year they don't get much "filing" from pavement, and old dogs' nails seem to just grow and grow.

I caught him lying down shortly after we came inside. Cut the front paws no problem, the top back leg fine, but the leg he was lying on was a little trickier. After I finished he jumped up to go outside and I let him. I cleaned up the nail trimmings then turned to look outside and saw, to my horror...

Bloody footprints!  I must have cut the quick of that last foot.  He walked blood all up and down the path in the yard.  Gave no sign that anything hurt, though.  I hoped that the cold would cut off the flow quickly, but that didn't seem to work.  Maybe it's because he takes a daily anti-inflammatory drug.

This makes it look like his front foot bleeding, but he's just standing on another puddle of red.  The effect the snow did have was to preserve the blood in its fresh, bright red state for the entire weekend!  Any peek outside brought to mind some awful slaughter.

In other Oskar comfort news, I've been concerned about him sleeping on the cold floor.  Previous years, he's climbed up on the couch on cold winter nights, but he's not doing that any more.  Our house is on an unheated crawl space and the floor can be 5 or more degrees colder than the couch.  I didn't want to put blankets under him because he needs stability for lying down and getting up.

Farm Girl Beth came to our rescue (once again!).  Her dog, Banjo, sleeps outside in a wonderous pen with straw and good wind blocks.  However, F.G. Beth's daughter The Lovely Josie was concerned that Banjo might be too cold, so they bought an outdoor heating pad for him.  Apparently that manly Banjo would have none of it!  So F.G. Beth offered to let Oskar use it.  The first day it was at his bed he kind of ignored it, but look what I saw this evening...

 Looks like he's coming around!  Thanks F.G. Beth!