The Great Neuter of 2018: Surviving the cone

A week ago Hank was neutered. Our vet strongly recommended 6 months for a husky, to prevent behavior issues and to keep him as a great dog citizen of the dog park. As he grew closer and closer to 6 months old, we knew he was right. It is really nice to have a dog that plays well with other dogs, and isn’t trying to hump or dominate them. A husky just isn’t like a golden retriever (we didn’t neuter Monty until he were forced to by housing regulations when we moved here).

Hank and his brother have a dog park play date most days of the week, so we arranged with his owners to have them both neutered on the same day so they’d have the same recovery period.

We dropped the boys off at 9am. At 11:30am I got a call that Hank was trying to walk around just 10 minutes after his surgery so it was time to go home!

The poor fella was so dopey. I had to carry him from the car since his legs weren’t ready to work. I put him in his xpen in the laundry room for recovery. He spent the afternoon like this:

and this:

For the next couple of days, he seemed really restless. He wouldn’t sit still or nap. Was it pain? Or affects of the sedation? No idea. No naps make a super long day.

The vet said the cone must stay on for 10 days, and then the boys can resume their dog park runs. Without the cone, a dog can tear out their stitches in seconds. Not really worth the risk being so far away from a fully staffed emergency vet clinic.

I can only assume most sled dogs don’t do well without exercise. As the days go by, Hank is becoming more and more aggravating, naughty, hyper, and has a growing hatred for his cone.

For the first few days we had some calm moments:

But then he gets naughty, and stands on things. He even turned on two burners of the stove.

He’s stealing shoes, socks, magnets off the fridge, anything he can reach.

This is him hanging off the couch upside down.

Every day he’s become more obsessed with chewing his cone to pieces. We’ve had to do anything we can do to distract him. Short walks. Rawhides. Peanut butter in a kong toy. Massaging him. Crying our eyes out begging him to lie down and sleep. Well maybe not that one, but I’ve been close.

Eventually after hours and hour every evening, he finally does this:

Or this:

And we tip toe away and cross our fingers until bed time. Thankfully, he has been sleeping fairly well over night, but by morning, he’s even more nuts than the day before. And today he started at 5:30am.

The cone is now zip tied, and duct taped. It has hundreds of tooth punctures.

85 hours to go.

This may be the longest 10 days of our lives.