Ella has had the cone on for nearly six days now. Tomorrow she (we hope) gets it off. We can't wait, and neither can she. The saddest thing is when she tries to scratch her head or neck. It's just the scrape of claws on plastic. It has woken us up many times, and we've done a lot of her ear-scratching for her this week.

The other pathetic thing is that she still hasn't figured out quite what her clearance is, either sideways or up and down. Often she'll be padding along and the cone will catch on the side of a door or piece of furniture and she'll have to back up and try again. Last night when Laura got home from a rollerderby photo shoot, Ella went running for the door—and caught the cone on the bookshelves, and completely turfed it.

However, the e-collar has forced her to learn to use her paws for tasks she didn't need to before. She now coaxes toys and balls out of corners and tight spaces with her paws because she can't get her snout into them.

We've been calling her Conehead (in the nicest possible way). It's funny to watch her snuffle around in the backyard with the cone down to the ground, completely obscuring her head. She looks like a vacuum cleaner, or a geiger counter, or some weird bio-plastic cyborg. When we're out for a walk, she sometimes has this loping gait that makes her head swing back and forth very slightly. Of course, the motion is magnified with the cone. I took to calling her Radar last night.

Still, we can't wait for the collar to come off. She will be one happy puppy.