Prairie Vet Clinic

We didn't want to open for business today but we had no choice. Okay, we had a choice, we could have taken the business to town but we saved $200 to do almost exactly what they would have. I am not stomached for this though.
So, I am blissfully making Eggs Florentine for lunch when The Prairie Daddy came home. "How long has Jack been untied?" "All morning. He came and went and brought in a dead prairie dog earlier." "He's all cut up." "WHAT?"

I went out with The Prairie Daddy and saw the injury. Yikes! I mentioned the vet first and then we decided we could doctor him on our own. It is handy to have a barn with animal medical supplies. The Prairie Daddy called the vet and went over with him what to do. After lunch we all headed to the barn.

WARNING: The following pictures are graphic!

This is what Jack looked like before:

You cannot really tell but at the bottom there was a lot of loose skin and it was a huge flap.

We figure he was running (maybe chasing a rabbit) and caught something like barbed wire or a nail when going through a fence. It caught at the top left of the wound and just ripped a huge chunk of hide, obviously. Thankfully there wasn't any damage to the muscle or even the membrane over the muscle...except hoards of grass seeds that had to be plucked out.

I started to get light headed and a bit upset when he was really fighting the work being done. Thankfully The Prairie Daddy had lidocaine and was able to numb the whole area to get everything cleaned up.

We had to cut the flap of skin off, so the wound looks bigger but will heal up now without major scarring. That's why they wouldn't have left the skin or stitched.

There is some spray that makes an artificial scab and will help the healing process. It won't matter if he licks it either. We gave him some baby aspirin and he's happy that we're done messing with him.

It's raining like crazy outside this afternoon so Jack's happy to be curled up on his pad taking a nap. I think he'll have to be inside or tied up for awhile now. I sure hope this will slow him down a bit.