Not too long ago we had noticed a mass on Moon’s right front toe. We took her to the vet, who decided the mass had to be removed, and a skin graft done where the mass was. We’ve known our vet for a long time, and she’s done a lot of various surgeries, but while she hadn’t done a skin graft before, we encouraged her to do it. She did a lot of research, talked to a couple of her instructors in school, mapped it all out, and the day was set.

We dropped her off, and they removed the mass, took a strip of skin out of her side, and applied the graft. Her paw was splinted to keep her from moving it, since movement could cause the very fine capillaries that would form and supply blood to the graft to break. Things looked pretty good for a couple days, when the graft suddenly started turning dark, and sloughed off. Even though she was splinted, she could still flex her toe enough to shear the capillaries.

We took her back, and Tonia redid the graft, using a strip of skin from the her other side. This time, her paw was bound up differently (see picture), in the hope she couldn’t move it. We left her bound up like this for a week or so, plenty of time for graft to get thoroughly grown in. We removed the bandages and found… it had failed. Seems there was still sufficient movement to break the capillaries. Tonia also noticed she had put the graft on 180 degrees out, so if it had taken, the hair on that toe would grow the wrong direction. Oh well, what are you going to do?

Ultimately, we let the toe heal through second intention. Now she has a nice patch of pink skin with no fur on it, looking like this, but without the bit of scab.

A biopsy that was done on the mass turned out to be benign. Goldens are known to be tumor factories, so naturally we were quite pleased with those test results.

I became really proficient at changing her bandages, and slapping on a Ziplock baggy to keep it dry. I have no idea how many 2″ x 2″ sterile gauze pads, rolls of vet tape and 3M adhesive bandage tape I went through in this process.

Here’s a whole series of pictures taken just about every time I changed the bandage: [1] (these gross some people out, but you do what you gotta do for your dog).