Waterproof Boot for a Dog

Last weekend poor Molly  had nasty mishap while out for a walk she jumped into a paddling pool to retrieve her ball. Unfortunately somebody had thrown broken bottles in there which resulted in Molly cutting her leg quite severely. So spent the afternoon at the emergency vet having her leg stapled together. Not an experience I want to go through again. Not only was it distressing for Molly,  it was upsetting for us and made a big dent  in the bank balance. Anyway having been stapled, bandaged, injected and robbed blind, we went home. Molly had been given a drip bag to go over her foot to keep it dry. Which made a clomping sound as she walked, which she found unnerving, it didn't stay on too long either. So My next project was to make a boot that would be big enough to cover the entire bandage, that would be as waterproof as possible, that wouldn't make a clomping sound and one that would stay on.

This is was the second design and it seems to work brilliantly.

I used an old raincoat which I didn't like much  and cut out the  shape you see here.                     I did some gathering stitches along the curved edge of the longest section and pulled the them up until side matched up with  the shorter side. The purpose of this was to bring the seam up over the top of the dogs foot to prevent water from seeping in through the seam.                                                                  I then folded the fabric over and stitched the two curved edges together continuing to sew to the top edge, not forgetting to  insert the wrap around strap about 3" down from the top of the boot.                                                                 I did add a small shaping dart in the top gusset afterwards, but to be honest this is not really needed and can be a hindrance if the bandage is really bulky.                                                                   I used these wonderful Kam snaps on this project. I am really impressed with these. I used two male studs on the far end of the strap and four female sockets on the other end making strap of the boot adjustable to fit over various size legs and  thicknesses of bandage. But Velcro stitched onto the strap  will do the job just as well if not better.      I have to say that even the vet was very impressed with this creation.