Removing Bandage

[Kipcha]

So we have to flush and rewrap Peace. We have been sitting for pretty much an hour and have made very little progress because the bandage is so strongly attached to his skin that we're afraid of hurting him. Does anyone have any advice? We phoned the vet, but it was extremely unhelpful (I'm guessing because they close in 10 minutes, he just doesn't feel like helping out too much I guess?) and we have to get this off and taken care of.

So anyone have any tricks to this?

 

[Maureen Las]

What supplies did the vet give you?

You need to take a bottle of sterile water/saline and literally pour it over the bandage to wet it ; when it is wet it will come free

Some areas of the bandagemay continue to stick and you may need to pour more sterile water or saline over those areas until they come free.

You can warm the sterile water slightly so it is lukewarm before youpour it over the old bandage

You are totally right not to just pull off the old bandage under any circumstances.

I assume you are doing a total bandage change right?
You can boil a pot of water if you want but then you must wait until it is cool tepid before using it

 

[Kipcha]

The vet just gave us the stuff for his new bandage (A patch for against the stitches, then gauze to wrap around that, then tape to keep that in place, the vet wrap to go around that and finally, the bandage to hold it all in place) and a syringe to flush out the abcess area.

What we actually ended up doing was getting some peanut butter and rubbing it against the spots with hair/skin and it actually worked rather well, but was extremely messy and was hard to wash off of him after. I'll definitely be trying your idea next time we have to do this in a few days.

Yes, we did a total bandage change and flush. It took us 3 hours to get the bandage off on its own, that's how painstakingly slow I was going to insure that we weren't hurting him, although I think he was just getting impatient overall. So we just need to let him air out a little and then wrap it up again with new stuff and do it all over again in 3-4 days... Hopefully we'll do it faster next time...

 

[tamsin]

Holding a damp sponge to the area has the same effect but is a little less soggy than pouring water