Life with Murphy the Cone Head

by Courtney Mroch | More from this Blogger

23 Sep 2008 12:58 PM

Last Friday I was lamenting life without Murphy. He ended up getting the go ahead to come home that day. (Thankfully.) But coming home meant making some changes to our lifestyle.

Caring for Murphy the Cone Head

The surgeon sent us home with some strict instructions for caring for Murphy for the next eight weeks.

1. Because he has stitches, he has to keep his cone (a.k.a. Elizabethan collar) on at all times. (I'm sure he has stitches at the surgery site, but a cast's covering those up. The stitches the vet's trying to keep him away from are on his shoulder. They had to take some bone from there to graft on to his paw during the surgery.)

2. Much to Murph's chagrin, he's restricted to super limited activity. This means no bunny hunting expeditions, no chasing bumbles, no playing of any kind. He gets to go out to poop and pee. That's it. Then back inside to lay down. And it's leash walks only. No free roaming for him.

3. We must keep him confined to a small area or crate.

4. When we do go out, we have to cover his cast with a plastic bag. (The vet gave us a nice thick one that used to hold 1000 mg of some kind of medicine. Very ingenious way to recycle vet supplies I thought!)

5. To keep him from gaining weight during the next eight weeks, we have to feed him less and add a half teaspoon of Metamucil to his food.

6. We also have to keep Murph comfortable. Which means clean and soft bedding so he doesn't get bed sores. I bought him a new bed to try and help with this. He has a dog bed already, but he doesn't use it. (Mr. Meow does!) The new one has bolsters on three sides which is more like the chair he normally likes to lay on. So far he's using it a lot more than his other bed. (Heck, even if he just laid on the new one once he'd have used it more. I don't think he even sniffed the other bed.) But he seems to like this new one.

Learn more about Courtney Mroch

Courtney Mroch is a wife, a proud pet parent, and a writer. She's been with her husband, high school sweetheart Wayne Pryor, over 20 years, married 11 of those. She's "mom" to Mr. Meow, a.k.

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mcmama (51978) 24 Sep 2008 08:05 AM

Poor baby. They hate the cone collar. They just wanna get back to being their doggy selves. And it is worse with a cast, too.

When Catzilla had surgery, he had to wear the cone. Devised all sorts of ways to loosen it, wriggle out of it, destroy it. I was ready to glue it with epoxy to him. Finally after the first night, he was so frustrated I found him banging his head on the bunny cage as if to say "Hey, you, four legs and fur, HELP ME!!!!"

8 weeks is a long time. A long time

Courtney Mroch (9169) 24 Sep 2008 08:37 AM

Your Catzilla stories just never fail to cheer me up, Janet. Here I was in a glum mood this morning, then the tale of Catzilla trying to coerce the bunny into freeing him from his cone...well, it's just plain hard to be glum after that.

Murph's hanging in there. He doesn't seem to mind the cone too much, but the not walking out of his yard??? TORTURE! He plants himself on the curb and alternates between staring wistfully across the street and glaring at me!

Thanks for your comment.