We had something similar happen to us during Covid. I’m not sure what happened to our boy, but we had to start going to a completely different vet office.

One Sunday morning at 2am, we let our boy out to go potty, he got the zoomies which wasn’t strange for him but then when he came in I immediately saw blood everywhere on to floor. His entire leg from the back(bottom?) of his paw pad up his leg, twisted around to the outside and up to his elbow…..it was slashed opened. I’m talking his skin was dangling and you could see the muscles moving underneath. We rushed him to his vet(they have emergency hours and a Dr on call). It took 30 minutes to get him in(waited for 15 minutes in the parking lot) and the Dr had to remove some of his skin because it was already starting to decay. He stapled him up and said to bring him back in 10 days. After 10 days we took him back and they removed the staples. We weren’t able to go in with him this time cause of Covid restrictions. He walked in happily with no issues but when he came out he was pulling on his leash and seemed stressed, he also didn’t greet me when he saw me and just wanted to get in the car. Not 30 minutes after getting home the wound opened back up and we had to take him back. He very clearly didn’t wanna go back in but they talked nicely to him and he followed. This time they stitched him up and left it for 12 days. He was obviously loopy picking him up from the stitches so I didn’t notice anything off about him then. When we took him back up there he fought them going in. Tried to run off instead of going in and they just dragged him in. It took a long time to get him back this time and when he came out he was again pulling and he was obviously very angry. He’s been a completely different dog ever since then. He’s always angry, won’t let anyone touch his paws or legs, if anyone tries to put a muzzle on him(which he was trained to do) he’ll attack the muzzle. If the vet approaches him with anything in their hands, he’ll attack the thing they are holding. He now has to take anxiety meds every once and a while. They completely ruined my dog and won’t tell me what happened to him when I wasn’t allowed to go in there.

The new vet we went to spend a full 20-30 minutes sitting on the ground with him building up trust with him. He even let her give him a shot afterwards, he still growled but didn’t snap or thrash like he had been at the other vet. He still don’t like his paws touched unless he’s on his meds but it’s at least manageable now.

If you absolutely can’t get him comfortable with lightly touching/petting his paws then it’s okay to ask your vet for anxiety meds. It doesn’t make my dog act differently. The first two or three times he took it, he was sleepy. Not like drugged and unable to move around, he would still get up and wanna go play outside when I took the other two, but he would also go right back to sleep as soon as he thought we were done playing. After that the meds didn’t make him sleepy anymore. It just made him relaxed. And he doesn’t need it everyday, he also only takes 1/4 when he does take it cause that’s all he seems to need to feel better. You’ll probably only need it when