Henry Cuts His Own Fingernail

Last night when I came home from the baby shower I was attending, Joey and I sat in the office and talked for awhile.  Henry played happily on the floor like usual.  Joey glanced down to look at him and said, "Woah, what is that?  Is that blood on the carpet?"

Gross.  We examined the three spots and determined that yes, it was blood on our carpet.  Joey rushed to the bathroom to get the Sol-U-Mel (our version of carpet cleaner - it's all-natural, non toxic and creepy chemical free and yet it still works!) and a scrubber.  He sprayed down the spots throughly and began to scrub.  The bloody spot turned into a huge bloody smear, grossing us both out.

"Ew...I guess I should have blotted it first..." he said, then started pressed a paper towel heavily to it.

Joey is very noble to clean up most of the disgusting things in our house.  I'm quite happy to take care of dirt and food spills, but I just can't handle dog puke much, and probably not puppy blood.  (Although I don't know about that one because it's only happened once and Joey cleaned it up.)

"Where do you think it came from," he asked, glancing around.

"Maybe his rawhide?  He was chewing one when I left, sometimes he cuts his gums when he chews too hard," I suggested.  Henry truly isn't very bright...I'd stop chewing on something if it was making me bleed.

"No...the rawhide looks fine, it must be something else."  Joey noticed, examining the nasty puppy rawhide before setting it aside to get back to the spots, which were by now invisible.

"Look at his front paws, does one look bloody to you?"  I asked.

Joey looked and saw what I was pointing out.  He agreed that it looked bloody, so I picked up Henry and tried to move his paw in such a way that I would be able to ascertain just where this blood was coming from.  He jerked his paw away and curled it up close to his furry little chest and strained to get away from me.

"He's hurt!"  I wailed.  I hate it when my puppy is hurt, I always cuddle him very closely and tell him he'll be just fine while I scratch him in all his favorite places.  (This is the part where Mom and Laura, neither of which care much for dogs and Henry in particular, roll their eyes and say "It's a dog!"  But I choose to ignore them sometimes.)

I managed to pry Henry's little paw away from his body long enough to see that he had somehow ripped his dew claw in half.  (I didn't take any pictures.)

"Oh, poor buddy!  Joey, come see?  He ripped off his claw!"

Joey came to examine Henry's paw, but by that point Henry had had enough of me touching it and looking at it, he pulled his paw back to his chest and soundly refused to give it back to me.

"We'll have to take him to PetSmart tomorrow to get the rest of his nails trimmed," I said.  "Maybe they can put something on this so it doesn't get infected."  I had considered putting alcohol or peroxide on it, but I wasn't sure if that was wise and we don't have The Internets at home, so I had no way of looking it up online.

And so that was the excitement at the Woestman household last night.  Our dog chewed his own claw off and bled on our carpet.  (Well at least we figure he chewed it off...how else would it tear off like that?)