Dog Drama

it's official, we are THOSE people. the ones on the reality shows about how terrible pet owners treat their animals. after a lovely visit on monday morning with kelly and kids i headed home and had a nap with H and was woken up to S freaking out about howie's neck bleeding. i figured it was a flea bite he'd scratched or some other non-life-threatening concern. i went downstairs and took off his collar and bark collar to investigate only to find 2 gigantic holes where the bark collar prongs had imbedded in his neck and a 3"x4" area of skin oozing and rotting and basically smelling like something died many moons ago. how this happened you ask? we have NO idea. howie is not an animal that allows you to ignore him, he was showing no signs of illness or distress or any discomfort in the area whatsoever...idiot. the vet (whom my mother took him too immediately) said that he clearly can't feel pain as she scrubbed away at it and he just sat there with his tongue hanging out. so basically we are mad at ourselves for not being aware of this festering mess, and howie for ignoring himself. we're pretty sure that our animals and kids are only one more rotting flesh wound away from being fostered out. major fail.