This is maybe not for the faint of heart.

I know. It's like, is she even DOING dog agility anymore? Rest assured we have 2 weekends of USDAA in a row coming up, and yes. I have barely been practicing. And Gustavo has barely been learning anything new except chew on the couch pillows. Oh wait, not new. Oh wait. And that's my sock. Hold on a minute.

OK. Gustavo has a weird wart thing growing on his nose. And today we go be therapy dogs and visit the nursing home. And he looks ugly.


Here's what his nose looked like a until a few weeks ago.


Here it is with the attractive and giant wart.

I showed it to one of my clients who is a small animal vet. She said, yep, wart. But in better and more complicated vet words. I believe the words were the like dog version of genital warts, a "common" thing puppies can get on their faces. My puppy has common genital warts on his nose.

So my idea was, can I knock him out with Tramadol and just cut it off? This is where the horse folk differ than some of the dog folk. We just sometimes knock out our animals and do stuff to them because, well, that's what we do. We like to keep an arsenal of drugs on hand ourselves. Dog folk seem to generally take them in to dog offices. Luckily I have vets that come to the barn and who understand my Perhaps A Little Bit of Knowledge is Too Much Knowledge Tendencies.

"Um," she said, "I guess you could do that. It might just go away on it's own, too. Maybe you want to bring him in the office if it doesn't?"

"So you can knock him out and cut it off?"

She looks at me. "I guess you can just do it." She'd have to knock him out to lidocaine his nose anyways. He is not an easy patient. Do not even ask how teaching him to do dog fingernails is going. He is freakishly, horribly strong for such a tiny dog and for as friendly and nice as he is, doesn't like to be messed with.

I'm like, "Do you think it's gonna need a stitch? Like if it has a root?" I think I sounded a little too eager.

Laura. Don't lets perform surgery on our own dog, ok? When we're feeling flush again, after this month's tax FIASCO, he can go get his wart sliced off by a pro. Because giant nose warts just aren't that cute. I just hope all our nursing home friends don't care.