Have you ever seen the Cone of Shame? It’s that lamp shade that the vet makes a dog or cat wear so he can’t lick him or herself. I’ve always thought the Cone of Shame was as low as you could go for animal punishment. I mean it was right down there with the Penalty Helmet that my cousin Jimmy and I used to have to wear when we were playing Nintendo hockey and we screwed up on a play.

For those not in the know, the Penalty Helmet was a 1960’s era, gold glitter, open face Bell motorcycle helmet that was most likely made by request for Liberace. You had to wear the Penalty Helmet if you missed your defensive assignment on a fast break or if you missed an empty netter. Basically anything that was just pure dumb. Of course I should mention that the Penalty Helmet was only used during extensive underage beer research.

Anyway, back to the Cone of Shame. So like I said the Cone was reserved for the worst of the worst at our small little vet practice down here, but this weekend, my poor little Doberman friend named Diva got saddled with an even worse embarrassment. She got the Maleficent. See picture above.

Apparently, she was attacked when younger (she’s only 7 months) and her ear required surgery to fix. The ear has healed fine, but she doesn’t make her ears stand up like most Dobermans do. This presents no harm to her, but the owner wants her ears to be upright and so we were forced to tape her ears in position with plastic extensions to help them “learn” the right formation. How lame is that? All I can say is that the owner is lucky I’m not in charge cause I would have taped her ears up before the dogs.

As bad as it looks, we’re not hurting the dog. She was fine through out the taping and never complained a bit. You didn’t hear it from me, but I’m happy to report that Diva and her partner in crime, Snoopy managed to pull the ear cones off just 6 hours later after leaving the vet. Go dogs go!