No, no, not the feet!

It is wound season again for Toby, and he's got a bad one between the pads of his feet. This is the worst, the absolute worst! I have treated literally hundreds of small wounds on this dog, and the trick, the absolute most important thing, is keeping them dry. Trim back the fur, keep him from licking it, and within hours there's noticeable improvement. I have a miracle spray from the vet, too, but I pride myself on rarely needing it. Early detection and fearless trimming are the keys to success.

But not the feet, no! You cannot keep the area between the foot pads dry, you just can't, and he hates to have his feet touched under the best of circumstances. He's pissed at me, and I'm bruised all over from being kicked - it's not intentional, he has this spastic reflexive kicking thing going, even when he just stands on that foot. You wouldn't think that skinny little leg could pack such a wallop, unless you'd seen him running at a full sprint with the powerful, digging hindquarters of a puma. Then imagine all that force aimed directly at your forehead.

After three days we're both feeling battered and frustrated, and his foot is - well, let's just say "oozing" and leave it at that. So I think there's going to have to be another trip to the vet, where they will do really painful things to clean the whole thing out and hopefully give us some other miracle remedy. And again, I wonder - what happened in Olden Days? Surely working dogs cut their feet all the time. Did people have better folk solutions for it? Would the wound just heal on its own, eventually? Did dogs simply die of a cut foot? It couldn't possibly have been this complicated.