It’s that time of year again. It’s freezing and that means the city is sprinkling salt in the streets. And for me that mean pads that hurt because salt is sticking in my hair between the pads. So after every walk my paws have to be cleaned with water.
If it isn’t done with water, I would like my paws myself, but Jessica doesn’t allow that. She’s afraid that I’m going to have a tummy ache and be a very sad little kees again. So she cleans it becomes it comes that far.

My pad is healing very good. It’s going so good that I’m able again to walk without a sock outside and the walks are long again.
Jessica and Katinka are saying that I’m back being my old self and that I’m acting like a happy-go-lucky keeshond again. During the walks I’m sniffing a lot again, I’m happy whenever I see something or someone, I’m skipping again during the walks,… I’m just happy.
Today I had my first long walk again in almost 3 weeks with Katinka and Shunka. We went to Aarsele to walk in the fields. The walks are for the moment being picked out depending on the kind of ground we’re going to walk on. There are still a couple of spots on my pad that are delicate and so I can’t walk to much yet on very small pebbles for a long time.

Lately Jessica has noticed that the hair on my paw with the wounded pad is growing like crazy. If she compares it with my other paw, it’s almost twice as long. She can only think of a couple of reasons why it’s growing so fast.
It can be because of the ointment Newderm that she’s using on my paw or a natural reaction to protect my pad or because it’s being enclosed in a bandage or sock and that causes heat on my paw.
Jessica wants to cut that hair, but she’s hesitating because she wants to wait for another week so that my paw is more healed. But for the moment it’s funny to see how big one paw is compared to the other one and the reason is only hair ^_^

When Jessica’s at home, I can walk around without any bandages or socks on my paw. But when she’s not around, I still have to wear a sock. Every evening I now have to wear a sock.
Sunday morning Jessica was happy when she noticed that the sock was a bit wet because I wanted to lick it, but today she was a bit angry. I managed to take of my sock and that sock was soaking wet. And my paw was almost entirely clean even though the hair between my pads was dirty from the ointments and disinfectant. There was a piece of my pad that was a bit loose at the top and now that’s gone. Jessica put some newderm on it so that it would be able to heal faster, put on a really light bandage and a sock so that the ointment wouldn’t stick to the sock.

This afternoon I went to the vet to check up on my paw.
The vet has taken out the 4 staples and to do that Jessica and Katinka had to hold me. When he took them out, I was in a lot of pain and made the strangest noises. Jessica and Katinka tried to relax me, but that wasn’t any help. That really hurt.
After that the vet took a look at my paw and everything looks very good. It seems to have closed nicely. But now I still have 8 holes in my pad from the staples and these have to heal now. Because of the removing of the staples, my pad was bleeding again, so the vet put some powder on it to stop the bleeding and put a new bandage on.
Since Katinka had to work this afternoon, Shunka was at my house and when Jessica took us out for a small walk, it had just finished raining. And now I can start acting like me again 24 7. When Shunka went through a puddle of water, I also had to go through it. At home I was being my wild self again, but I regret doing that.
Even though I don’t have any staples in my pad again, it still hurts a bit, so I still have to take it slow for a couple of days. Jessica also told me that this weekend we were still going to make short walks so that those holes can close very fast so that we can go on long walks again very soon ^_^

Early this week Katinka went to the vet with one of her cats and he asked about my progress. She told him that none of the staples have been coming out, but that I had a sore spot. He recommended to put some newderm cream on it, so it would heal faster and was very surprised to hear about the staples.
In the meantime 2 staples are coming out and that’s hurting a bit and I’m holding my leg higher again. The new cream smells really nice and I want to lick it, but I can’t due to the bandage.
Speaking of bandage, yesterday evening I had a bit of a dilemma. The wound can’t get wet and even though it has a bandage on it, it was raining outside and I had to go outside. So Jessica’s mom came with a clever solution. Take a piece of think plastic (like a freezing bag with a piece cut off) and place it around the bandage (so my feet was at the bottom of the bag). After that put on a baby sock and to keep it in place put some tape around it. As a result the sock and the outside of the bag was wet, but my paw and bandage were dry. The only thing is that during the walk, when I put my paw down, you could hear the bag. But this gave Jessica an idea of how much I’m already trying to use my paw.
But tomorrow is the big day, because I’m going to the vet for a check up and the staples have a great possibility to be removed.

Since I can’t go for any long walks I’ve been staying at home and only going out every couple of hours to do my necessary business.
At home I’m not allowed to play with things or become too wild because otherwise I’m at risk of overusing my left back paw and losing the staples. As a result I’m very bored and the only thing I do at home is sleeping, eating and hugging. I can’t wait to be able to walk again.
On the other side, I’m making new friends at the short walks we do. At all of the grass squares we walk around houses, there are also cats and dogs laying around. The dogs aren’t too friendly but the cats are. For the last couple of days, there’s for instance a black cat that follows is during a part of the walk and wants to get attention, but he’s a bit shy because of me and because of that he comes close, but not close enough. Jessica won’t allow me to play with it or run to it, because she says the cat has to come on his own. So I have to wait until he’s confident enough.

I’ve been jumping around on 3 legs for a couple of days now and the things you hear other people say outside when they see me is just so funny.
The funniest thing I heard was a grandmother and grandchild walking behind me. The child said: “Look. That woof woof has something on his paw”. As reply the child got: “The woof woof is hurt”. And then the child said: “Poor woof woof. Hope he gets better soon”.
Other people are laughing with the fact that the color of my bandage is changing every day and other people are very serious and ask what has happened.
People I don’t know keep looking and are talking to themselves. I think most of them are thinking “Look at that dog” and “how fast he goes on three legs”.
Other animals don’t react the way people do and cats and dogs always want to play with me. Take Shunka for instance. She wants to play and go for walks with me, but I can’t. As a result, she’s a bit sad. I think she can’t wait to cross over the beach and play in the woods with me.
But today, to fight the boredom, Katinka and Shunka brought two big bones for Shunka and me to nibble on while Katinka’s at work and Jessica will keep watch so that we don’t try to steel each other’s bone.

This morning I went on walk with Shunka and Katinka while Jessica was at work. It was a walk to the woods and the beach. The whole morning Shunka and I were playing during the walk. While we were returning home in the woods, Shunka suddenly saw a rabbit and went hunting it. While Katinka and I were waiting for Shunka to come back, we were standing in a spot near to the water. I decided to go in the water and play there a bit. After a while I returned to Katinka and we went a bit further, when Katinka suddenly noticed a blood trail. She followed the blood trail and ended up with me.
She started to look at my paws and saw that my left back paw was missing a piece of pad and that it was bleeding very heavily. To make sure I didn’t get any infection, she decided to clean it to see how deep the cut was. She called for Shunka and hurried direction home with us until we got to a place where there was clean water. She cleaned the cut and saw how bad it was and decided to call the vet. Luckily he was home and we could go to him in a half an hour.
So instead of going home we went directly to the vet. Once there, I was in a lot of pain and wouldn’t be so calm any more. When the vet wanted to inspect my paw, I wouldn’t allow it any more and I had to were a muzzle and he gave me some sedative with a light painkiller in it. After that I don’t really know what happened, but apparently the following happened after me falling asleep. The vet inspected the wound and decided to put some staples to hold the different pieces of pad together. Then he put a bandage around it and told Katinka that it has to be changed daily.
When we got home, Katinka’s boyfriend had already arrived with some bandages and a two warm fleeces for me to sleep on and to put on me. Meanwhile Katinka called Jessica to ask her to come home so that she could watch me because Katinka had to go to work.
When Jessica came home, I was still sleeping. But I was wiggling my ears a bit and after about 10 minutes I opened my eyes again. Jessica stayed with me the rest of the afternoon, evening and night. But it still took some time for me to really wake up. Around 3pm I was moving more and around 4pm my eyes were more open. Around 5:30pm I walked around again for the first time and around 6pm my leg with the wounded pad began to hurt. So I started to squeak louder and louder. Jessica’s father started to panic and called the vet to ask what to do. The vet told him that it could be my bandage that was getting to tight and that they should rebind the bandage. So Jessica started taking of the bandage, but suddenly ran into a bit of a problem because the bandage was sticking to my wound and it was hard to take it of. She took five long minutes to get it loose bit by bit, but once it was loose I wasn’t hurting so much any more.
And now the healing problem begins.

This week’s very windy and I love it. Lots of people and dogs are suddenly disappeared and it’s like Shunka, Jessica and I are the only ones around during our walks. Sure, our hair is been blown in all kinds of directions every time we turn a corner. And at times it’s hard to go forward due to a sudden increase of wind power, but I don’t mind.
The advantage of that much wind is that when you go against the wind direction, you can sniff all the different smells a lot sooner and as a result you can get excited a lot sooner without Shunka and Jessica knowing why.
But I have to tell you I’m a lot more tired when I get home because I have to use a lot more power to move and resist the wind power. But that isn’t so much of a problem because, Shunka and I get enough rests between walks. The only problem is that Jessica doesn’t want to go to the woods, but she promised to take me from the moment the wind isn’t so bad anymore.