Nail Drama

Sarah and I braved the downpour for dinner at The Cheesecake Factory last night. It was, obviously, delicious and the portions completely defeated us. We didn’t have the girls play beforehand, as we usually do, but they were still very well-behaved during the meal. Fay did her usual badger Yara to play thing, but gave up fairly quickly. Yara is always so amusing in these instances, her face completely reads, “Oh, my God, get that puppy away from me! Can’t you see I’m trying to work?”

After we finished, I made a quick stop at CVS for a few things and then we headed back to my apartment. We dried everyone off, including ourselves, as best we could and unleashed the dogs for some playtime.

Because for whatever reason, Sarah is the only person Yara doesn’t make a fuss with when having her nails cut, she’s been gracious enough to cut Yara’s nails when she’s around, if needed. I’d mentioned to her that Yara may need a trim since she’s been gnawing on them relentlessly for a week. So, while I changed into dry clothes, Sarah busied herself with that task. From the other room, I heard a sharp yelp, and not soon after Sarah made the proclamation that she’d nicked Yara’s quick for the first time, but she managed to finish the trimming without much hassle. Emerging from my bedroom, I told her where an open box of baking soda was and we herded Yara, dribbling blood, into the kitchen to stem the flow of blood. It was then that we noticed that she was practically gushing blood from her other paw and Sarah was quite shocked given she’d barely trimmed the nail that was bleeding on that foot. But since Yara’s a notorious nail chewer, we surmised she’d really gotten that one down.

Anyway, after we finally got her all clotted up, my kitchen looked like a murder scene had occurred there. The living room had a few drips and smears of blood, too, but the kitchen floor was pretty much covered. We cleaned up quickly and warily let the dogs play again. Yara didn’t seem fazed by any of this. In fact, Sarah was more upset at the bleeding than the dog, who whined incessantly as she worked to clot the wound, while simultaneously beating her tail on the kitchen door.

As we sat and chatted, though, I noticed there was some more blood on the floor. We checked Yara’s foot, and tried to apply more baking soda on the off chance she had reopened the clot, and watched with bewilderment as Yara proceeded to lick off blood and baking soda from the floor and on her foot. We repeated this maybe a half dozen times before I scrutinized the foot in question and realized it was caked in blood. Since Yara was continually stopping to lick it, the blood was staying wet and thus dripping off and/or being smeared all over the place.

Sarah and Fay left shortly after this and I relegated Yara to her bed. I checked her foot a few more times over the next two hours, before turning into bed myself, and she seemed fine. I wanted to wash it, but decided I’d wait until this morning just in case I caused the wound to bleed. Much to my surprise, Yara beat me to it and had licked her foot completely spotless by the time I was prepared with a damp cloth. Her bed, however, has the looks of a horror film.

Never a dull moment around here. :-)