Back… again…

The above is the reason I have for going away for so long this time (almost a month? wow!)… poor Hitchcock had another anal gland rupture and had to go through surgery not once, but twice! It was a very long, very arduous month for us with him and although we tried very hard to not worry about him, it was impossible when I heard the word “tumor” and “cancer.” Being that he is only 2 years and 8 months old, I really felt like I would break down if that’s what he had… and the possibility of it really scared me. To make a very very very long story short, Hitch is now missing an anal gland and, thankfully, it was NOT cancer! Phew! Now it’s just a matter of recovering from surgery and then we can move on from this whole ordeal for hopefully forever! He is absolutely pathetic during this time… it’s really sad to see.

The cone pictures are from the first night after the second surgery when I was afraid that the Bite Not collar (what he’s always used and you can see him wearing above as well), although great at keeping him from the incision, was going to allow him to pull on the skin 2″ away from the incision. It didn’t last very long, though. Just these couple of pictures and 15 minutes later it was changed out… we couldn’t sleep with all the crying! The Bite Not collar went back on and, thankfully, he was a good boy and left the entire area alone!

Sadly enough, we had to cut down his gorgeous beautiful long coat to boot. I’m really sad to see it gone, but I do have to admit he looks adorable! We had to cut him down really really short due to the mats he had on him so this isn’t at all ideal. I do think that in another month or two he will be at a good length and we might keep him shorter anyway as he is much harder to groom than Kubrick! These pictures are from the two weeks he had to recover between surgeries:

And because poor Kubrick has been extremely jealous of all the attention Hitch is getting, here he is with his brother… so he can’t say I’m picking favorites.

Now that Hitch is on the road to recovery (will take another week for him to be allowed out of the collar) I hope to have more time not only to blog but also to get out of the house… being stuck indoors with a whiny puppy is no fun let me tell you! I hope my readers had a much better July than I did and now to catch up on 300+ blog posts! Holy crap, how will I ever get through it all?