Note: The vet cannot see my dog until Wednesday, and the doggie ER said it’s not an emergency, so I’m just looking for interim care advice.
So…my dog slipped out of her harness today on her walk, and escaped on a little adventure. When we caught up with her (four hours later), she had injured her paws. Basically, she’s ripped the external most layer of skin off both of her front paw pads, so that she has a chunk of skin flapping about. It looks like the layer of skin below that layer is not bleeding – it’s more like the layer of skin exposed when you tear off a blister of something (i.e., moist, but still pigmented, and not bloody). She is bleeding a very small amount, but it’s not even enough to say it’s coming from the tear and not some other small wound on her foot.
It’s hard to say how much distress this causing her. She is sort of a special needs dog, who wouldn’t whine under any circumstances, and its hard to say from her behavior what she is feeling since her normal behavior is sort of bizarre anyway. She is protecting her paws a very little bit, but not limping around.
We cleaned her, including her feet, with just some soap and water and she’s just resting now. When she is dry, I intend to wrap gauze around the feet, maybe with some padding.
Is there anything else I should be doing? Is there any way that waiting two days to see a vet could be a problem here? The only thing I can imagine is that if she needed stitches, waiting two days would be too long; but she doesn’t have any kind of deep gash. More like avulsions.
Pad injuries came up on another forum I read and the consensus seems to be that there is not much you can do for them, other than what you have done. Clean the pad with soap and water and then try to keep it clean. Try to keep your dog as quiet as possible to allow the wound to heal.
You can wrap it with a bit of gauze and some vetwrap to hold everything in place and stop your dog from licking too much and keep it clean, but it’s best for wounds to breathe, so don’t keep it wrapped for too long.
Unless it’s a deep serious gash, pad cuts do heal on their own and stitching is not always successful.
I just wanted to echo what brainstall said. I once inherited the care of a puppy with four severely burned pads (got into oven cleaner). The vet said not to wrap them. Instead, I soaked his feet in a dilute cleanser solution (Hibiclens, I think) several times a day. In between those soakings, I tried to keep him inside as much as possible and keep his feet dry and clean.
Wrapping intuitively seems like a good idea, but it just keeps the wound moist. In this case, you want it to dry out and scab up.
BTW, the puppy was fine. His paws were clearly deformed, but it never slowed him down one bit.
For people, keeping wounds covered and moist helps prevent scabbing, which can prevent or reduce scarring, but the wound takes longer to heal, and is more susceptible to infection and additional injury.
For specific types of wounds, it’s worth it for the benefits to keep it bandaged and moist, and then to keep a closer eye on it. Those benefits don’t always apply, so the advice isn’t anywhere near universal even for people.
For an animal, they can’t keep an eye out for infection or damage, and can’t convey that information even if something did go wrong. Especially for an injury to a foot, where speedy healing is very important, I don’t think many people are going to care too much if there is scarring or thickening of the skin where the wound was. They’d rather have it safely scabbed over and therefore less likely to get infected or dirty or re-injured.