The Kid Doesn’t Stand a Chance 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Ruth hung up the phone and took a deep breath. She looked at me from across the room.

“Your favorite client is on her way with Rambo,” Ruth said. “He has a laceration on his foot. And the worse part, she is bringing her kid.”

“Great, I wonder how we will be able to look at his foot,” I said. “The last time he was here, we couldn’t get through the exam room door.”

“She said she had a muzzle on him,” Ruth said. “That might help a little. But with the boy along, it will be total chaos. Maybe we could handle Rambo better if we had Sue wait in the reception area with her son.”

“That’s a thought, but she usually wants to be involved,” I said. “And here she comes now.”

Sue was a petite gal. She couldn’t weigh more than a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet. Rambo was a large, unruly Rottweiler who weighed at least a hundred and forty pounds. Jamie, a five-year-old holy terror with bright red, almost orange hair, never listened to anybody, especially his mother.

Rambo led the procession through the door. He was on a leash, or maybe it was Sue who was on the leash. Rambo went where he wanted, and Sue was drug along, thinking she had some semblance of control. Jamie followed but was looking for things to get into when he came through the door.

“You find a chair out here and wait for us,” Sue instructed Jamie.

“No, I want to watch,” Jamie said defiantly!

Rambo was squishing blood out of a wound on the side of his foot with every step. Sue managed to bring Rambo to a stop as she grabbed Jamie by the arm and wrestled him into a chair in the reception area.

“Now, you stay put!” Sue said sternly.

Rambo continued to bleed as he turned circles in the reception area. Ruth tried to direct Sue and Rambo into an exam room. Jamie slipped out of his chair a made a dash for the door. Sandy came around the counter and followed Jamie out the door, hoping to keep him out of the parking lot.

“Jamie just ran outside,” Ruth told Sue. “Maybe you should keep track of him while we look at Rambo.”

“That kid, I don’t know what I’m going to do with him,” Sue said as she handed Ruth the leash and followed Sandy out the door.

Ruth looked at Rambo. He sat and seemed to instantly calm when Sue left the room. Ruth patted him on the head, and he licked at her hand through his muzzle.

I came into the room with a dose of tranquilizer and a wet towel.

“He is fine now that Sue is outside,” Ruth said.

I rubbed Rambo on the top of his head, and he pushed back against my hand. I picked up his foot and used the wet towel to clean the blood and debris from the wound. It was a small laceration on the side of his small toe. It had lacerated a vessel, which accounted for all the blood. Now that he was quiet, the bleeding had slowed.

“Let’s get him back to treatment, and I can get a couple of sutures in this before they catch Jamie,” I said.

Rambo followed us with no problem. I bent down, and with both arms under him, I lifted him onto the treatment table. I washed the area and shaved the wound. Rambo was acting like a typical large-breed dog now. Confident in his situation, I think I could have sutured this wound without anesthesia, and he wouldn’t flinch. But I injected a dose of lidocaine around the base of the toe.

We could hear Sandy and Sue coming in the front door.

“Ruth, go out and make sure Sue doesn’t come back here,” I said. “Tell her Rambo is doing so well, we don’t want to upset him. I will be done here in a few minutes.”

I closed the wound with three interrupted sutures of nylon. At any other time, I would have used absorbable sutures on Rambo. But now, we know the secret, separate him from Sue, and he is fine.

I could hear the commotion out front. Sue was scolding Jamie and trying to get him seated. He was having none of it. 

I put a light wrap on Rambo’s foot and motioned him to jump down. He jumped down, and we walked out front. Rambo stopped before we got to the reception area as if he didn’t want to rejoin the chaos.

Jamie came running when he saw Rambo. Sue was right behind him, trying to get a grip on his arm again. She stopped and looked at Rambo.

“Boy, that was fast,” Sue said. “An he looks like he likes you.”

“Yes, it was a small cut,” I said. “The blood made it look worse than it was. In the future, we will have you wait out here when we treat Rambo. He is a different dog when he is by himself.”

Sue stood at the counter and settled the account with Sandy while Jamie hung around Rambo’s neck, pulling his ears from time to time. Finally finished, Sue took the leash, Jamie pushed the door open, and Rambo pulled Sue out the door. 

We stood and watched as she loaded Rambo into the back seat and then raced to grab Jamie by the arm, pull him back to the car, and into the back seat with Rambo.

I looked at Sandy and Ruth and shook my head.

“The kid doesn’t stand a chance,” I said. “If I have seen it once, I have seen it a hundred times. People with unruly dogs always seem to have unruly kids.”

Photo by Pramod Tiwari on Pexels.