What to do when you’re supposed to soak your freshly adopted dog’s foot but they don’t cooperate?
The day after we adopted her, Cookie became lame on her hind leg. The veterinarian determined she had an infection of sorts between her toes.
For her unhappy foot, Cookie got antibiotics and we were to do 20-minute foot soaks in Epsom salt, twice a day.
Epsom salt soaks, huh?
Sometimes things are easier said than done.
Administering the medication was easy, Cookie does accept pills hidden in food. We utilize the method recommended by Dr. Marty Becker, of using three treats, with only the middle one hiding the pill. The cheese did the job just fine and the whole experience was enjoyed.
With the footsie soaks, though, it was not such easy going.
Cookie, the half-wild girl she is, has trouble with some of the things civilization brings. As it turned out, that includes foot soaks.
First, we tried gently placing her foot into the Epsom salt solution in a container. Fail. Cookie was quite freaked by that idea.
Then we tried applying a poultice with Epsom salt paste in a freezer bag. Fail. This lasted a bit longer, but all in all about one minute.
What were we to do?
Doing it in the tub would probably work fine, except she’s never seen a bathtub, never mind getting into one. And because we do want to be able to give her a bath when she needed in the future, we wanted her to get used to that idea slowly, so it could be a positive experience. Kiddie pool probably wouldn’t be any different. We considered all kinds of ideas.
We didn’t want to freak Cookie out too much, being new to our family and urban living but we did want to take care of the foot.
What if we just drenched the foot with the solution for 20 minutes somehow? She might be ok with that and perhaps this would do the job. We knew that Cookie didn’t mind having her foot sprayed, as we did try using DermaCool on it the first day.
After confirming with our vet that this should do, we needed to figure out how exactly we’d do this.
A bunch of towels to soak up the excess liquid?
Pee pads!
Then I got the bright idea that maybe we could use the puppy pee pads instead.
We could have just done it outside but we needed to be able to be comfortable enough to do this for the whole 20 minutes. Indoors seemed like a more sensible option. So the decision has been made to try to work with the pee pads and see how it works.
They were nice enough at the pet store to sell us individual pieces, as we didn’t need the whole huge package. The product we got is called Puddles Puppy Pads.
I can’t really tell whether they are better than other similar products, as we never use any of these for their intended purpose and until now for anything else either.
But I can tell you that the amount of fluid these pads can hold is enormous.
The whole idea worked well and we were able to drench Cookie’s foot for almost the 20 minutes without getting anything wet. The pads held their own. And we could take care of Cookie’s foot without freaking her out.
Yay for creative thinking and puppy pee pads.