Pack of Paws

This is our goofy, pouty, boxer-pittie Rambo. After you hear his story you’ll understand the name. We picked up Rambo at the Devore shelter with his brother Buck, and they are inseperable. Rambo loves attention and was the youngest of the pack until the girls came along and he gets rather annoyed by them and the attention they’ve stolen from him especially the puppies; he dislikes them most. If he gets on the bed to sleep with us at night he disallows anyone else access.

Rambo is about three years and is the most high maintenance of all our dogs as he tore his ALC pretty early on and had to have surgery. The vet. says it most often happens with dogs that run and jump as much as he does. Keeping him immobile and giving him pills almost caused the hubs and I a divorce but we survived and Rambo’s leg was healed.

He started holding up the other leg and we were worried we’d have to get the opposite leg done, but the vet luckily said we just need to try and keep him less mobile and give the leg rest, but that’s nearly impossible as he pouts when he cannot go out with the others.

Just one week ago on Monday the hubs and I fell asleep exhausted and we did not notice that Rambo had a huge open wound down the side of his belly and of course it was 11 p.m. and after hours so the hubs rushed him to VCA Ontario and of course it was pretty crowded, so I called around but as with all emergency vets after hours they were all 4-6 hour waits. I do like VCA; however I do get a pit in my stomach when we have to take one of the dogs after hours because they really do have you over a barrel and they know it.

They assessed him and took him into surgery, stitched him up and placed a drain, because they were worried about how long the wound was exposed; he ended up with 22 stitches. Earlier that evening my husband was showing me the sprinkler head the dogs broke off but he realized there were no bite marks on it. Previously, we thought maybe one of the other dogs bit him or maybe a coyote got in the backyard, but no other dogs were hurt and there was no other blood anywhere in the yard, so the most likely culprit was he must have jumped off the planter and the sprinkler caught his side and opened him up.

I ended up calling in sick to babysit and isolate him while my husband slept. Do you know as soon as that dog walked in the door he headed straight back to the slider to go play outside. Good thing they gave us sedatives to calm him down, and we finally found a way to get him to eat all his pills. Feed him in front of another dog so he feels threatened. I know it sounds mean but otherwise he will dig around his food and find his pills then promptly spit them out. It’s maddening.

My husband gives me crap sometimes for picking this one because he’s cost us a small fortune but guess who calls to come lie down with him at night?