Pence wears the cone of shame

Hi friends!

I know it’s been a little while since our last update. We’ve been super busy this fall and weren’t able to make it to any dryland races.

The weather finally turned cool enough to run the dogs here in Indiana toward the end of October. We did our first run of the season on October 26. I do not have any photos or videos from that run because the first run of the season can be interesting and I wanted to focus completely on the dogs and equipment to make sure everything was going smoothly.

We started our scooter run at the house, and about two houses down, the dogs randomly crossed the street and stopped in someone’s yard. They ended up in a bit of a tangle there as we had to wait for a couple cars to pass before we could get started again.

Once we were running again, the Boo and Pence did fantastic. We came around the back side of the loop we run and I noticed a opossum hanging sideways on a tree trunk. When we got closer, it scurried up the tree and caught Boo’s attention. His ears perked up and head darted sideways. Luckily, Pence kept him on target and listened to my “on by” commands and we passed by without much difficulty.

Because it was the first run in a long time, we just did a quick ¾ mile loop and returned home. They topped out at just over 19mph!

A few days later, we went on another scooter run. We did the same ¾ mile loop and the dogs were complete pros. No issues or tangles. Right before we pulled back into the driveway, I noticed Pence’s back left leg looked strange. Almost like she was holding it a little up into her belly. I did have the GoPro record this run and went back to review the video to see what happened. It appeared that she had a tight muscle/muscle cramp on that leg the last four steps or so.

We gave her some time off after that and made sure she got some meat and was hydrated. We spent some time stretching her legs the next few days as well. She has been back to normal ever since, so I’m glad it wasn’t anything major.

The photo below is a screenshot from our run. Both dogs had on their reflective harnesses, as well as their light up Noxgear LightHound harnesses.

A couple weeks ago, our copy of Blair Braverman’s new children’s book The Day Leap Soared arrived! Obviously I’m not a kid, but the book is adorable for anyone who loves sled dogs and our baby Boo was in the book! If you haven’t ordered your copy yet, you can order yours from our friends (and Boo’s brother) at Honest Dog Books!

Boo went back to Beth’s house last weekend because we are dog sitting. Boo does ok with other dogs typically, but he has been afraid of small adult dogs in the past. We are watching a friend’s dog named Zorro, who was a stray that showed up at my friend’s house 12 ish years ago. His ears may be bigger proportionally to him than Boo and Pence’s ears lol. Zorro and Pence ignore each other for the most part. They do try to eat each other’s food, but we try to not let that happen.

Lastly, Pence had to take a trip to the vet hospital yesterday. I’ll spare you the gory details, but if you don’t want to hear about dog back-end issues, stop reading here! If you stop reading here, just now she’s on the mend and doing well!

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If you’d like to hear the rest of the story, I’ll continue now. Yesterday morning and mid-day, we noticed Pence was having a hard time going number two. She also started holding her tail up weird. Upon further inspection, we found a bulge on her butt, maybe the size of a golf ball. This was around 12pm.

I immediately called our veterinarian and they did not have a vet on staff that day, only techs for vaccines and grooming. The referred us to their sister vet hospital who had vets in office. I gave them a call and of course they were out to lunch until 1pm. A few minutes after 1pm they called back and said they could get us in at 2pm.

I’ll spare you the gory details of what happened as the vet began to examine Pence. Ultimately, her anal glad ruptured. Didn’t know that could happen. They had to take her to the back and flush out the open wound from the rupture, which was apparently filled with infection for some reason.

When she was brought back to me in the exam room, she had a cone on. The good news is that they didn’t find any other concerns in the back end. They said the rupture could be a fluke, or could be caused my several other things. For the next 10 days, Pence is on pain medication, antibiotics, and has to wear a cone.

The wound has to heal open, so there are no bandages covering it. They did have to shave a little hair back there just to keep the area clean. The cone is to prevent her from licking it while it tries to heal. If bacteria from her mouth got in the wound, it could lead to a worse infection.

Pence is doing fine resting and healing up at home now. She runs into everything with the cone, but is starting to figure it out. Luckily, she’s already a very easy going dog.

She gave us quite a scare. All we can do now is hope that it heals on its own and was just a fluke. If we notice swelling again, we’ll have to take her back for further testing.

That’s all for today, I believe. We hope everyone who celebrates has a happy Thanksgiving!

-Riley, Hannah, Boo, and Pence