Stitches

Dad and Julie left early this morning for a week in Florida where Dad will be attending a conference as a representative of the board of our local Putnam hospital. Since I am about to have full time access to the California sun I volunteered to stay home and feed the dogs/guard the house/etc. Plus it will give me more time to spend with Jessie :) Jessie got fixed last Tuesday and the vet decided that she was too sweet to need a neck collar to protect her stitches. I can see how someone might be lulled into a false sense of calm around Jessie. She is, after all, very cute and dainty - not to mention that she was under anesthesia for about 99% of the time the vet spent with her... "Just don't let her get them wet, and try to keep her from running, jumping, stretching or doing anything that might put pressure on the wound" the vet said when Julie picked Jessie up. Oh really? You would think that major surgery (such as having your lady parts removed) might slow Jessie down a bit, so Julie said "OK" to the no neck collar and vowed to keep Jessie on a leash whenever she goes outside for the next ten days (until the stitches come out). Julie brought her home and we all took turns holding her until we thought she was calm enough to walk around, as soon as she was clear of our fingertips, Jessie took off at a full sprint around the kitchen stopping only to jump up and bite Tapper's tail. (No running, check. No jumping, check.) So we corralled her into her cage which worked for about five minutes at which point she started barking relentlessly. The thing about training a puppy is you have to try REALLY hard not to give it mixed signals so that it learns what you want as quickly as possible. We have been cage training Jessie and part of that cage training involves leaving her in the cage until she barks (which means she needs to pee) and then taking her outside where it is safe to pee. So Julie took her out (on a leash) into the fresh snow to pee. Jessie loves playing in the snow so not only was she distracted from the task at hand (peeing) but she was soon covered in snow. (Don't get the stitches wet, check.) We gave the rules our best effort for about a day and then got fed up - you can only devote so much brain power to stopping her from licking, chasing, getting excited - basically just being a puppy. It was a test of wills and Jessie definitely won. So it came as no surprise when we looked down last night and discovered that one of the three stitches was nowhere to be found. We have no idea how long it has been gone but she wasn't bleeding and didn't seem to be under any general distress. I took her to the vet this morning so they could check her out and they said she looked fine and we were doing a great job. Oh really?