By Elissa Caterfino Mandel

My iPhone photo stream features a picture of my dog’s back left paw. The picture wasn’t a mistake, the photographic version of a butt dial. It’s actually a medical record.

Just to be clear: my dog wasn’t limping on or licking the paw. It didn’t seem to bother her. But while the little swelling around her toe had seemed innocuous enough to both of us, it didn’t go away. Not with coconut oil, which Maisie seemed to view as more of a condiment than a salve. And not with the neglect I decided to lavish on it that, in retrospect, may not have been benign.

Can a dog stub her toe? Get a hangnail? That’s what I assumed when I ignored the redness on her paw for about two weeks. I couldn’t even see it unless I picked up the paw and searched. But because I’m no vet and the swelling didn’t go down, I finally took her to the doctor.

Apparently some dogs have a proprietary relationship with their paws. They don’t like anyone touching them; if I suffered from the same kind of reluctance, I’d save a fortune on pedicures.

Will she mind this, the doctor asked before lifting up her back foot. When I shook my head, I felt like I was saving Maisie from some kind of canine metoo moment.

In no way is Maisie touch-phobic. If it involves what she perceives as petting on any part of her body, Maisie’s all in. The vet examined the foot. “It’s probably a bacterial or fungal infection. But I have to give you the bad news, too.”

I didn’t want the bad news, too, at least if there was a way to get only the good news. So, I steeled myself. I’ve already lost one husband to a brain tumor. Surely I wasn’t about to see a five-year-old dog expire from a hangnail.

She’s a young dog, the vet conceded. But sometimes these things are tumors. What?

The tumor had a fancy name, which I don’t remember and could probably look up. But I’m just impressed that I recall the medical name for her afflicted toe, digit p3.

A tumor like this is localized, the vet explained. In the worst case scenario, it will involve digit amputation. It’s extremely painful, but the dog will survive. Yes, but will I?

She gets antibiotics for what might be a bacterial infection for two weeks, and every day, I have to soak her foot in Epsom salts. Soak her foot? Good luck with that, my husband said when I told him.

And after 21 days if the swelling is still there, we assume it’s fungal and try another medicine. All that to try to rule out what else it could be: a tumor and what follows. This is the dog version of bunion surgery. That’s what the picture on my phone is for: to have a record of what the toe looked like at the end of October, so we can tell if it gets better.

So, I hereby issue a warning . If I’m scrolling through the phone to share the latest pictures of my granddaughters, I may inadvertently get sidetracked by a photo of a dog toe.

I can’t wait to get rid of it. Just to be clear: I mean the photo, not the toe….