In the darkness of the windowless room, I can just make out the outline of the black figure and sharp white fangs. Suddenly the eery green tint fills the eyes. This spooky scene is not what I expected to experience this morning at our visit to the vet. It is fitting for an appointment in October. Creepy and irregular happenings can take place in the month leading up to Halloween. This one caught me off guard.

It began last night. The puppies had lost that back-from-the-groomers powdery fresh smell. The tattered black and white bandana around Koda’s neck was stinky and grey. Their beards collected debris, water, food, who-knows-what-else, and needed cleaning. Evidence of this was that every time they drank from the clean water bowls, sediment of dirt would settle down at the bottom of the metal bowl. Clean water was no longer clean. Plus our downstairs began to harbor that dog smell. I try hard to keep up with minor spills, vomits, and accidents. I sweep and mop throughout the day. But we realized that the scent that needed freshening up was coming right from the dogs. So I decided to give them a bath at home, something I had not done in awhile since they’d been to the groomer and had baths at boarding school.

As I mentioned in my blog yesterday these dogs are huge. Bathing one at a time up in my master bathroom tub was quite a chore. The water in the tub turned a cloudy brown as it came off of each dog. The dirtiest part was under the chin. After the baths my bathroom was a mess but the dogs were clean, smelling fresh as a daisy! I toweled them off upstairs and then brought them back down. That’s when the crazy energy ensued. What is it with freshly bathed kids? I remember my own children jumping from bed to bed in their wet hair and pajamas. A burst of energy brought on by washing off the dirt of the day. Koda and Summer barked, rolled around on the rug, jumped up then down then up again, all over the sofa.

My attempts to brush out their wet curls were unsuccessful. Then all of a sudden Koda’s right eye caught my attention. It was bright red. Aussiedoodles have very human like eyes, so a normal aussiedoodle eye ball has the dark pupil surrounded by the white. Koda’s white was a bloody red. “What happened?! Sweet Koda!” He started to squint his red eye closed, and pulled away when I tried to examine it. The rest of the night he was more subdued and laid out as I stroked his coat to comfort him. He was not himself, even seemed a bit vision-impaired. First thing in the morning I called our vet.

Our awesome vet, the same one who so gently and kindly helped us with Dot and Kitty, was there this morning to see Koda. His calm demeanor helped me (and Koda) right away. To examine closely Koda’s eye, he first put in some drops of a numbing agent. Then he applied a special dye to his eyes, and told me to prepare for a creepy Halloween like site. Intrigued, I asked if I should get my iphone camera ready. He shut the lights off in the windowless examination room. I could only see the whites of Koda’s fangs in the dark room. Then the vet turned on a hand-held purple dark light. Suddenly Koda’s eyes lit up with a scary shade of green. It was like a monster zombie possessed dog movie. The only thing more frightening would have been if Koda had started growling like Cujo. He didn’t though. He just sat calmly as Dr. D looked closely at each illuminated green eyeball. He saw what he was looking for, a tiny dot. It was an indication that Koda had received a small cut (ulcer) to his cornea. He said it wasn’t the shampoo or the toweling off. More likely it was from playing out in the bushes like Koda does often. It happens, Dr. D told me, then gave us some antibiotic ointment to apply for a few days.

Phew! I was relieved to hear my bathing of the dogs did not cause this eye injury. It is just like when my kids were little. They play and sometimes they get hurt playing. Scraping knees, falling on sharp objects and needing stitches, bumping heads and getting goose eggs. It is tough to be a parent and see your child get hurt simply playing in the yard. With puppies it’s no different. So for the next few days I will coddle sweet Koda and keep him comfortable as his cornea heals. At least he has a cool story about looking like a zombie Halloween monster dog at the doctor’s office. My kids would have loved that when they were little!