I love hiking. I love hiking withe friends. I love hiking with my dog.

I don’t love hiking with a screaming baby on my back.

Last weekend we were out having a family adventure with a 2 other families from our neighborhood. We went on a little walk/hike along a canyon road. It was so fun to be together in the beautiful mountains. Chopper was having fun as well. It does my heart good to see him running around and smelling the earth in hopes of happening upon a creature to chase. Such a simple thing can bring him joy.

It brings me joy.

At one point Chopper was off to the side of us on a mountain slope tromping around. We heard a branch snap and he yelped. The sound grabbed our attention but Chopper went on his way just fine. Later, I noticed him limping and took a good look at him. He had completely gashed open his leg down to the muscle.

It was hard to know what to do about it. I’ve had Chopper for 10 years now but he’s my first dog and he’s never been hurt. He seemed to need stitches but after some research on-line was confused about it possibly healing on it’s own. It’s always hard to know whether or not to take the kids in for stitches let alone a dog. Our main concern was obviously infection but I guess their tongues have some antibacterial properties to it.

Since we were in the mountains for the weekend, we cleaned it up best we could with a first aid kit we had on hand. Our friend even had a suture kit on hand. Would you dare? How would you keep the dog still? Ha! Don’t worry, we didn’t even attempt it.

Only thought about it.

Once the business days rolled around we took him to the vet. And now this lucky dog has 5 humongous stitches and a lovely cone to wear for 2 whole weeks. Poor dog.

He comes and looks at me with his little black face. He seems to say “Take this off of me, please!” and shakes his head and whole body in hopes of shaking it off some how.

Imagine if we had to wear such a thing.

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