Apollo's Infected Foot Saga

There’s something I haven’t been talking about the past couple of weeks, my little border collie Apollo is once again nursing a foot injury.

It started off with a simple little tear on his left pad. Earlier this summer he sliced off his right pad on our fence which was another saga of infection and antibiotics, but this time the tear was smaller than a dime and not very deep. We are becoming experts and at first we kept it disinfected and wrapped up. Three days later we awoke to find that Apollo had chewed off his bandage and in his irritation chewed up the pad really badly. What started off as a small scrape became a very deep incision in his pad. We put his cone on and re-wrapped it.

A day later his pad looked to be healing up nicely so we decided to let it air while he had his cone on, within 10 minutes his paw was noticeably swollen. We called the vet and made an appointment for the next day because he clearly had an infection now. But as the night went on his paw kept swelling bigger and bigger until it split apart in different places and began to ooze puss and blood.

Big fat paw (this was after the swelling subsided! It was TWICE as big as this when he went to the vet!)We rushed him to the emergency pet hospital where he was given 21 days of antibiotics. We were told not to wrap it except when he went outside to use the bathroom and to come back in a week for a check up. The worst part? We were told if we can’t kill the infection in his foot they’ll have to amputate it!

For a week we had to cover the couches and beds in old sheets as his paw drained out all over my house. MAJOR ICK! Luckily we don’t have carpet, only hardwood and laminate so the floors were easy to keep clean and disinfected.

At his one week check up they shaved his paw to get a better look and it’s still covered in open sores. He is now on two antibiotics one topical and one oral.

Poor guy has had to wear a cone 24/7 for more than a week now and you can tell he’s really bummed about it, but not as bummed as I’ll feel if we have to amputate his foot!

Lesson learned? Always cone your dog when they’re injured! And invest in that pad protecting ointment!