When Gable came out of the surgery on his foot, they told me sternly to NOT let it get wet. They gave me 2 IV bags and some adhesive tape to use at home. He hated it and it was clunky and unwieldy and I hated it too. I tried looking up Medipaws boots but apparently those are Rx only and can only be bought through your vet (mine didn’t have any). Tried a knock-off version on amazon which didn’t have his size and shipping was a ridiculous 12 dollars on top of it being 36. Did he really need it that long? I was already reeling from the surgery cost. Tried using stuff around the house like a glove, saran wrap, mixed together, but it came right off and wasn’t giving him enough cushion. Then I decided to make him one like my sneaker.
Materials: cheap/old flip-flop, good scissors, hot glue.
Traced his paw and cut the size to fit the IV bag. Snipped the top edge of the bag, folded a little and then hot glued that sucker on there.
If you notice, the tip of it didn’t fit to the edge of the flip flop so I snipped that off too.
As usual he wasn’t much of a fan, but on our first test run the next morning he adjusted and benefitted off of it because he could get some leverage on asphalt and he also ended up stepping on a rock and thank goodness he had the nice sole on the boot because that would have been super painful.
But, I noticed that he was having a hard time getting good walking pattern, so I went back to the table and tried to round it off like one our own sneakers. That way he could roll the foot forward.
It’s secured with vet wrap and sometimes some non-stick (human) adhesive tape to make sure it doesn’t slide around. It takes some practice to get the right wrap in the right place and tightness. Eventually I rounded the backside of the heel too.
Review: It worked for the few days I needed it. If I could do it again, I would have made the shoe much smaller and much closer to the size of his foot. He looks a bit like a duck and it kept smacking his other foot because greyhounds walk like cats in almost a straight narrow line. Also, the added height must have been obnoxious because it wasn’t on the other foot too. Probably messed with his hips a little. Definitely a short term solution. Another caveat is that on a very cold day the hot glue completely separated the two materials.
Later I ended up getting the Amazon boot anyways because he has trouble not licking the wound at home and the doctor ordered it.
