Birthday Parties and a Stupid Dog

Today we went to have a little party for Monkey2 with my parents. We went to the restaurant where my sister works and had a little birthday lunch. Monkey2 was very excited and had a great time! My parents got him a new Nintendo DS for his birthday. [He got one for Christmas, but we think a certain toddler threw it away - it was put away nicely, but someone removed it and it disappeared off the face of the planet...this coincided with the toddler's "throwing stuff away" obsession...so we are just guessing where it ended up...LOL!].

We had a really nice lunch, all the kids had a blast!


Sometime in the last year, Monkey1 turned into a young lady. Definitely not a little girl any more! Wow!


Here Grumpy, have a lemon!


Granny with two of her granddaughters:



Then there is the "Stupid Dog of the Month" award:



Yesterday afternoon when I brought the dog in from outside, the whole side of his face was swollen and his eye was running and swollen shut. He was obviously in a lot of pain and looked really pathetic [the pic from today above actually looks much better than he did yesterday! His swelling has gone WAY down]

As soon as DH got home from work, he took the dog to the vet.

It turns out the vet thinks he had a flea bite and that started all of this. I actually have the Advantage Flea Treatment for him, but I hadn't seen him scratching and I am kinda leery of giving that stuff to the animals with the kids touching them all the time - it says right on the package it isn't safe for humans. :( [I did put it on him last night though....]

Anyway, apparently the dog does have fleas, and the vet thinks he had some flea bites on the side of his head. He scratched them so hard that he tore the skin up on the side of his face and ripped his own cornea [they had to shave the side of his head to see what was going on and he really made a mess of his own face]. *sigh*. In addition, because he tore up his face scratching, his face is now infected. Soooo... he is on two different kinds of eye drops and an oral antibiotic for the next week and a half. And he has a cone on his head. :( :(

And the cost? Exactly $199.48. ARGH!!!!!

You know, I grew up out in the country with a bunch of dogs [mostly strays that people dumped on us] and back then there was no such thing as flea treatments. You bought the dogs a flea collar and bathed them in flea bath and that was about the best you could do - and it didn't work. We never had a stupid dog scratch his own face up to the point of almost killing himself [if we hadn't taken our dog in, he would have gone septic and died probably] and almost scratch out his own eye [he definitely would have lost his eye without treatment].

I mean, how stupid can you be?

Now, to his defense [sorta], my husband thinks it is not fleas - he does have one big bite that looks like something else. DH thinks it is a spider bite, but the vet disagreed. [I do have to agree it does not look like a flea bite to me either]. So, maybe the reaction was much more serious than a flea bite would have been, but either way, personally I would have opted not to try to scratch my own face off!

Soooo....I'm having trouble feeling sympathetic for him. He's a sweet dog, and I recently had a breakthrough with him and he has become a *great* chicken dog [which took more work than I can even tally!]. He was very good at the vet and the vet was so nice. But gosh - I'm having a hard time not being mad at him for doing something so dumb and so *expensive* and damaging to his own self!!!!

I'm really glad it wasn't more serious, but frustrated to know it was self inflicted!