Category: Dog

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.