Blood is thicker than koolaid

So, our dog has this spot on the end of one ear that due to the dry weather, or its habit of sitting DIRECTLY in front of the heater, or un-carefully brushing through the bushes instead of doing what it's told, or maybe due to all three reasons, this spot tends to get a bit bloody.  It's usually scabbed over, and I've never seen it get on any furniture or anything.  But over the weekend the dog came in, and upon flopping its head back and forth to shake off after having its head gear (a gentle leader contraption without which the dog would pull us across several states) taken off, the walls in our mud room looked like this:

(Images from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.  Dunno what that music is, or what it's doing there, though.  Yay for YouTube!).

My wife wasn't there, but I decided to get the dog all patched up before she might bring home a pregnant blood aversion, and do the same thing as the above video, but with puke.

So I got out the first aid kit (both the human one and the dog's) and put on some some calendula, as well as some Neosporin and a band-aid.  Miraculously, the dog didn't wig out at those tasty unguents and sales disappearing past its eye to be applied just out of sight, and then covered over with something sticky and skin-like.  In fact, the dog amazingly settled down & didn't even pay its new accoutrement any mind.  I theorized it decided "Well, Daddy put it on me.  Usually when Daddy puts things on me, they make it better.  Maybe it's an earring!  I want one of those, cuz I'm a dog, and of course all the prettiest dogs have earrings!".  Of course that's what the dog was thinking.  My theories are always correct.

The dog and I then settled down for a bit of a post-walk nap (which involves sitting on the couch, the dog cuddling up next to me, and me dozing until something falls down and I get jerked awake).  Unfortunately, while the band-aid stayed on, it didn't really stem the flow of elevator kool-aid or whatever.  So when next I got the dog to get up and eat, I used this stuff called styptic powder, and it dried right up, even after further ear floppings.  Which is good, because that's what my wife had told me the first time she saw the ear bleeding.  Her theories are also always correct.

It's also good because I had been (jokingly) imagining something like the following interaction with my wife when she got home:

(NOTE: Some very brief not-safe-for-work-or-kids language.  Think before you click!™)

(From Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums)

Cast whichever of them you want, as either of us.  I know how I'm leaning.  Just don't think of "Rachel" as anyone real, cuz we know and love several Rachels we'd like to keep very much alive.  And while we're at it, don't cast our dog as Buckley, cuz of what happens to him later.  And it's not quite high-strung enough to be Spark Plug.

Actually, wow: let's keep Gene Hackman alive, too.  He was apparently just in a (non life-threatening, but still scary) bicycle accident, a few days ago!

Update: Well, band-aids, as you know, fall off.  Oddly enough, they fall off of flopping, hairy dog ears even faster than they do off of relatively sedate, hairless human skin.  So when it fell off again, my wife (apparently without a pregnant blood aversion.  Good to know!) put two band-aids at the end of the dog's ear, one perpendicularly over the other, so it formed a heart-shaped pattern.  Aw… now that dog has got a serious (Sirius?) fashion statement going!

Which is good, because the more we fiddle with its ear, the more apprehensive it gets at letting us.  Bleeding doesn't seem to hurt (and it's not still bleeding, but we're just covering it up in case…), but repeated fiddling just out of sight, particularly when one lacks opposable thumbs to do what we're doing, is apparently freaky.  Who knew?

Update Two: Apparently, there's some sort of regular pill we can give the dog, to make the edges of its ear heal soft, supple and silky smooth.  It's some condition that's easy to fix.  So we're taking the dog to the vet tomorrow.

Watch the side effects of the pill include bursting out into Barry White songs in appropriate basso profundo, in the middle of the night.  Or the dog's fart clouds getting a visible green cast to them.  Or growing antlers or something.  But will the treatment be better than the symptom?  Only time will tell…