Ajax: No More Failed Self-Cloning Attempt

For about the last six years, my dog Ajax has had this growth on his front paw.

It started as a little thing. When I first noticed it, I thought he had a tick on his foot, but when I tried to tweeze it off, he yelped. I took a closer look and saw that it was a little black skin tag.

Over the years, the thing slowly grew. At each vet visit, the vet would take a look at it and give me guidelines for when it should be removed.

Last week it finally met those guidelines: so big it was touching the ground when he walked, and he was finally taking notice of it and licking at it. The top picture was about a week before he started fussing at it.

I took that picture because he had collected all of his chew toys from around the house onto his rug. There was a fourth bone just out of camera range.

The bottom picture is Ajax this morning, with bright orange vet wrap around his foot. Yesterday was surgery day.

Because he is so big and has always been sensitive about having his feet touched, they couldn't remove it by just giving him a local anesthetic. (This was one of the reasons we were watching and waiting.) They had to put him under, and at age eight, I spent the day knitting in order not to concentrate on worrying about him.

But now he is home and doing fine. And I am thinking about drawing a jack o'lantern face on the orange vet wrap!