CONE HEAD

I REFUSE to be a grandma at the age of 31! Can you blame me? Due to my refusal my baby girl got fixed on the 17th. She had to wear the e-collar for 10 extremely long days. Luckily she learned quickly that she could still get through the dog door with the cone on her head. I was afraid that we were going to have a lot of messes in the house. She has been doing awesome on the potty training. There are still some occasional leaks when she is supper excited. I want to start letting her on some of carpeted areas in the house soon.


The first night she had the cone on was terrible. I didn’t know how the cone and her kennel would work so I decided to just leave the dogs out (on the tile) for the night. However, Miss Lillee got up at midnight for a stroll around the house. She must have still been sleepy because she was walking into scrapping the walls with her cone. (FYI this noise is actually amplified by earplugs!) I got up to make sure she could go out for a potty break then placed her and her brothers back in bed. This worked until 3 am when she went for another stroll. This is when I learned about the earplug amplification. At this point I was mad about being woken up again exhausted so I decided to try having her sleep in her kennel. After all, if she was in her kennel she couldn’t hit the walls with her cone. Once in her kennel, on the floor next to the bed, she didn’t settle down as I had hoped. Now she was hitting the kennel with the cone. I didn’t want her to wake up Neal, so I ended up freezing my toes off sleeping on the floor next to her kennel. She slept through the rest of the night (a whole 2 ½ hours). I spent the next couple of nights on the air-mattress. (My dog is so NOT spoiled) Luckily she eventually got a hang of the cone in her tight quarters (Really the kennel is quite large, but that evil cone took up lots of space.) and slept peacefully through the night.

Lillee was a menace with her cone. She is quite a handful as it is but the cone just made it worse. The cone situation was the hardest on KC. Lillee and KC play a lot. However, Lillee couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t supposed to play with KC while she had the cone on. Poor KC! When we were home we immediately corrected Lillee, but there was a lot of time for Lillee to torture KC while we are at work. Lillee walked into my legs numerous times and it hurt, bad. This gave me real sympathy for my middle child. Also Lillee managed to get the cone completely off one day while I was at work, for who knows how long. Twice she got the cone half off. Meaning the bottom of the cone was no longer on her neck, but in her mouth. She chewed it up pretty good.

Not only was Lillee torturing us with her cone, the cone was torturing her. She itched a lot. There were times when she would have an itch so bad, that she couldn’t reach, that she literally was crying. The cone matted her hair behind her ears and on the back of her neck. I had no other choice but to cut the mats off. They were tight to her head, which could cause skin problems if not removed. Suffice it to say that the whole house was very happy when Lillee’s cone came off.
Lillee got groomed yesterday. She lost more than half of her length. Her groomer Shauna did the best she could to blend in the chopped off portion part I cut with the rest of her body. I think she did a good job. (Especially considering what I gave her to work with.)

I also think Lillee is supper cute. You should feel her hair it is like running your fingers through silk. I might be extremely slightly prejudice, but I think my dogs kids are the best!