Desperation + Crazy Idea = Problem Solved!

As you may or may not know, poor Cooper cut his leg open on some mysterious object in our backyard a few weeks ago. We took him into the vet for stitches and he somehow ripped a few of them out a few days later. The vet said we could either get the wound re-stitched or we could do a daily soak in a special solution and keep him from messing with it and let it heal on its own. We opted for soaking the leg, which worked to keep it clean, but no matter what we tried he was still able to lick the wound. I even had him in a plastic cone AND the inflatable collar at one point and watched him very carefully perform some kind of insane yoga move to get his leg up and around in front of his face for licking.

How??? How could he still reach his leg???

I was about to give up, but then an idea came to me.


What if we could keep a loose covering over the wound, such as a sock, that would allow it to breathe but prevent licking? The first time we tried pulling the sock up and taping it to his leg with medical tape. This worked... for like 5 minutes until the tape lost its stickiness, the sock fell down, and the licking resumed. Next, we tried electrical tape. It was much stronger and held up better, but every time we changed the sock for a clean one it pulled his hair out and aggravated his skin. Back to the drawing board! I decided the only way to hold up the sock would be to cut holes by the top of it and somehow tie an anchor line around his body. This worked really well... until he sat/lay down and then it slipped off his butt. Finally, I had a crazy idea to tie an anchor line through the sock, up over his back, loop it through a harness, and back down to the sock. This was the best idea so far, but it was a bit loose and allowed the sock to slip off a little when he lay down. I then took the anchor line and taped it together about 6-7 inches out from the spot where it went through the harness and SUCCESS!

Cooper modeling the De-Licker 4000 (patent pending!)

His wound is now 95% healed and we no longer have to hook him up to this crazy contraption. We'll be keeping this setup for future use just in case!