Yesterday, after almost two weeks recovering from his accident, A.J. got to run off leash. After chasing squirrels around the park (well away from the road), I hooked the leash on and took him home. But before we left, I noticed he was bleeding from his dew claw.

He has ripped off his dew claw twice before, both times while trying to climb up trees after squirrels. This time I thought we got away lucky. The bleeding stopped shortly after we got home, and he seemed to be fine.

Later in the day we took A.J. for his afternoon walk. We had gone a couple of blocks when I decided to check his paw. He was bleeding again. We cut the walk short and went home. I was still hopeful that it wasn’t too bad and the bleeding would stop soon. No such luck.

A.J. was licking at his paw most of the evening. At bedtime he actually got worse. When he laid down to go to bed he couldn’t even figure out where to put his paw so that it wouldn’t hurt. It was another long night.

This morning he was still licking at his paw, and it was still bleeding. So after giving him his breakfast and taking him for a very short walk so he would go to the bathroom, we put him in the car and headed for the vet’s office.

Today is Sunday, so we had to go to a different veterinary office, the closest 24-hour vet. When it was our turn we went back and I explained to the vet tech what had happened. I also let her know that he was still recovering from being hit by a car, and explained what happened there. After I had explained everything, she said

“So, really, we can blame the squirrels for all of this.”

I laughed. “I like that, that’s much better than blaming mom.”

Like everyone else, she insisted none of it was my fault. (Just before we were called back, Greg said to me “You’re such a helicopter mom, but your dog is still hurt all the time.”)

Since this is the third time A.J. has ripped off this same dew claw, we knew the drill. They took A.J. back, sedated him, cut the nail off, wrapped his foot all up, and sent us home with pain killers, antibiotics, and a very woozy dog.

So, one more week where we have to work from home because A.J. can’t go to daycare. One more week with a sad and sore dog. One more week with a sad and stressed-out me.