Wednesday, June 20, 2018
When we last posted about Topo Chico (our driveway dog) a month ago, we had finally been able to catch him with the help of a tranquilizer from the vet and a homemade lasso. It wasn’t a good experience for any of us and he wasn’t happy with us after we got home and let him free.
We’re happy to report that things have changed dramatically since then. Slowly, slowly, slowy, Topo Chico has come to trust us and when we pull up the driveway, he’s actually happy to see us and not just the car. The pictures below cover the last month so you can see for yourself that he’s turned a corner.
The Monday before last, we decided to attempt to give him his first treatment of Tactik which is used here to treat mange, ticks, and fleas. Fortunately, he doesn’t have ticks or fleas but that because they don’t like dogs with mange which he does have. Lhia told us that dogs with mange have warmer than normal skin which ticks and fleas avoid. We’ll take that small favor.
Of course, the first Tactik treatment didn’t go smoothly. We planned it out several different ways and knew he’d fight us but what we didn’t expect was that he would trap himself in a corner of the yard were we could just pour the solution over his body. We were not able to get him on his belly and everywhere that we wanted but it was a good first try.
The next day, we convinced him to let us spray some more of the Tactic solution on the parts we missed the day before. He didn’t seem to mind that too much since we were simultaneously petting him and rubbing it in.
Monday of this week the weather was nasty with heavy rain so we didn’t give him his second weekly treatment until Tuesday. This time, with me holding on to Topo Chico and keeping standing, Patty was able to give him a full bath with shampoo and then a thorough Tactick treatment. I won’t say that he liked it but he tolerated it.
His open sores still look pretty gruesome but they are turning more to shades of red and pink where before they almost seemed like areas of dead flesh. We think what we’re seeing is an improvement anyway. Friday we plan to take him back to the vet to get her assessment and to see if there’s something we can do to cut down on the itching which drives Topo Chico crazy and causes him to bite his sores.
The videos below are in chronological order with the oldest first (shortly after the last blog post in May) to the most recent taken yesterday.
~Mitchell
Happy Ramblers 
Just awesome!