Tag: Critters

bookmark_borderHouse Projects: Wash and Ramp

Posted on by PaulaO

We’ve had several projects going on here lately. So far, they’ve gone fairly normal for us. As in lots of errors and time.

First, we got a washer and dryer. Yay! Then we had to prep the kitchen for them. Not so yay. The kitchen is the worst room in the house because of the idiot that added to it a long time ago. The walls are covered first in drywall but on top of that they glued linoleum. In some places, a contact paper kind of stuff was put up. The wood underneath varies. One wall, the wood goes sideways for some reason. Another wall, it is green. We moved the sink several years ago (oy, what a trip that was) and put in a new hook up for the washer/dryer we had. That was a stacked set so had only one plug. This new set is separate so I had to put in a new plug.

Things that went wrong: got wrong box and breaker, took them back, got wrong breaker again but better box; box was better but a PITA to get everything to fit; dryer came with wrong cord, went to exchange it, realized that the cord was right but the outlet was wrong, got a new outlet for that; got a kit for the dryer exhaust but not all the parts were in the box. Finally got to spend most of two days catching up on laundry.

(click on images for larger versions)


Washer in place. I’d not yet figured out the cord and outlet didn’t match for the dryer. Check out the glue mess under the window.


Lorna’s putting a clamp on the dryer vent. It keeps coming lose on the other end and I’m going to have to pay her to lay on the floor and use sheet metal screws to keep it in place. Or duct tape.


Clothes almost all done! Yay!

Now we are working on another project. The dog lot extends around the house to include most of the back porch. We’ve had a dog ramp of sorts in place for the dogs to use to get in and out. We’ve never done it right, just kinda faked one. But we decided that with Joella’s hips and PopCorn’s age, we ought to get it done right. That and I don’t think our patches can be patched again. Friday we got all the wood (well, most of it). Today we took the old thing down and began laying out the pieces to do the new one. We did go back and get more joists but we knew we’d have to get more stuff anyway. We have some obstacles to work around. Like the back porch is not level in the least. I’ll get a pic of the ledger board we put up. It looked so crooked that we dug up a 2nd level just to make sure the first one wasn’t broken. Then there’s the mud. Lots of mud. And the dogs who don’t understand where the ramp went. We put up a barrier of sorts because they were in the way. I was afraid we’d swing a joist around and crack someone’s skull. Or break the joist, which ever broke first. Hopefully, we will get it done tomorrow. The biggest obstacle for that is to get the first section (5’x10′) level and straight. Then it will turn at a right angle and will slope downward for 16′, twice the length it has always been.


current top section


current bottom section


Joella not being happy


PopCorn wondering where she is supposed to lay in the sun


Our attempt to keep the dogs away while we worked/argued
Oh, and check out the limb that fell down a few weeks ago. It is still attached to the tree. We don’t know how we’re going to cut it down.

I’ll let y’all know how tomorrow goes. Lorna has to be back at work on Tuesday so we have to get it done tomorrow. Or at least the main framing. I can use Tuesday to put the planks down.

bookmark_borderAnd Then There Were Four

Posted on by PaulaO

We lost one of our dogs Saturday.

Casey DiMilo started stumbling Thursday afternoon. Within an hour, she could no longer walk and her bark sounded like a seal since it took so much effort. We took her to the vet Friday morning where xrays showed a cervical spine problem. In case it was a slipped disc, the first thing they did was give her a high dose of steroids. If it had been a disc, she would have started showing slow improvement. 6 hrs later, they gave her a second dose. If the steroids did not work, it meant it was a cancerous spinal tumor. The vet consult they did with the orthopedic vet said most likely that was it due to its location. We could take her to Charlotte and have a bunch of tests done (incl. a MRI). The vet we saw originally had to leave so we saw another one later in the day. She felt that Casey had improved slightly (we didn’t see any difference at all) but we allowed ourselves to be talked into taking her home for the night to give the steroids a little longer to work.

During the night, Casey started wheezing (we think she aspirated after vomiting on the way home). By morning, she was still able to kinda sorta hold her head up, but that was it. She could jerkily move her legs but could not stand nor balance. When propped up on her feet, she stood on their tops, a sign of neurological damage.

Lorna had to work (at the post office, you can’t reschedule a meeting or have your secretary call your 500+ customers to cancel delivery for the day) so I had to take Casey in on my own. I was with her, of course, when she was euthanized.

Casey was a 14 yr old power house of a mutt. Part Beagle, part Jack Russell, part jack rabbit, Casey was still jumping up past our waists just a few days before she became ill. Being a little dog in a house full of big dogs, she had the “short dog syndrome” really bad. She wasn’t a bully, but rather an instigator. She loved to start barking at absolutely nothing then go back to sleep while the other dogs ran around trying to figure out where the burglar was. And her bark wasn’t gentle. All of us regular cleaned ceiling paint out from under our fingernails after jumping that high from her sudden, uncalled for barking.

Of all our dogs, Casey was my least favorite. You could say I hated the dog. Okay, I will say it. I hated the dog. She never listened to what I said, barked for no reason, humped the other dogs as they played, barked at the other dogs when she couldn’t hump them, barked at the wind blowing a blade of grass, barked at anyone who looked at her or even thought about looking at her. You get the idea. She was an annoying little shit. But that didn’t mean I didn’t love her. I did. I just didn’t like her.

Lorna just complained at how quiet the house is today. And how quiet mealtime is. And how quiet it is at night.

Casey came to us as our last foster dog back in ’96. The group we fostered for had already been told we were not going to take in any more. We didn’t like the group that well. But they called and gave Lorna a sob story about this pup they had heard of and could we take her just for a few days until they found someone else? Lorna couldn’t say no. Casey had been found huddling near a burnt box near a dumpster. In the box was the burned bodies of an adult dog and at least one other pup. Casey had a burn on her lower back. The family brought her to our house and it was obvious they wished they could have kept her but their landlord had a one dog rule. They’d named her Skittles but I could never say the name right so we re-named her. The foster group forgot we even had the pup so we decided to keep her. The other dogs (Zeus, Jake, and Maggie) got along well with her.

So here’s to Casey DiMilo. While we think the silence is wonderful, we miss you.

bookmark_borderIntro: Annie Oakley

Posted on by PaulaO

She’s a wee thing still, just 2.5lbs and approximately 9 weeks old.

Looks little in Lorna’s hands!

Attack of the Killer Strawberry

A clerk at the post office where Lorna works told us that a kitten was at her husband’s body shop the other morning. She, the kitten, must have belonged to someone at some point because she is so tame. We took her to the vet Thursday and she checks out fine. Wormy but all kittens are.

So far her life is limited to Mike’s Big Boy Crate in the living room. We let her out today for a while (the dogs were outside) so she could explore and get into trouble. She did both just fine. She’s a quiet, calm kitten but I know that it will all come exploding out of her some day soon. She’s just not gotten to that chapter in the Manual yet.

We hadn’t come up with a name until Lorna said she caught herself thinking about “playing with Annie”. We already had a Calamity Jane so an Annie Oakley just seemed to fit.

bookmark_borderThe Sad News

Posted on by PaulaO

We let go of another of our Hungry Hairy Horde. Calamity Jane, aka Callie, died Wednesday afternoon after a long long illness at the ripe old age of 16. Callie (and her brother, Pav) came to us in 1993 when they were about 6wks old. They were little firecrackers! We went to a friend’s house and put them (the kittens, not the friend) in a crate and put it in the back seat where Zeus also was. They hissed at him and scared the beejeebers out of him! He jumped into the front seat where he refused to move. We finally had to pull over so Lorna could sit in the back without this huge dog on her lap. From then on, Zeus did not like kittens. He never ever tried to hurt them but he would run as fast as he could in the opposite direction. This the dog who killed huge groundhogs. When they grew up, both cats thought Zeus was the greatest thing since the can opener and pop-top canned cat food.

But I digress, as usual.

Those of you who are owned by cats know that while they profess to be graceful deities, cats can be rather klutzy. Like falling off the back of couches. 99.5% of cats will come out from behind the couch with this look of “I meant to do that.” Our Callie was one of those .5% of cats who came rushing out saying “Did you see what I just did?! Wasn’t that funny?!”

We live in a swamp of sorts and have lots of frogs in the stream behind the house. Other cats catch the frogs without getting more than a little damp on their paws. Not our Callie. She’d be wet and/or mud covered from the belly down and not see a thing wrong with it.

Other cats would come in from the rain with just a few drops of water on them, perhaps more on their feet. Not our Callie. We used to keep a towel at the back door to dry her off after a rain.

The first thing both of us will remember the most about Callie is her purr. Some cats will purr just a short while then stop. Not Callie. Our nighttime joke was “don’t touch her! she’ll start purring and we’ll never get to sleep!” followed by “too late”. She’d purr for a very very long time. Loudly. In Lorna’s ear.

Callie liked to keep the dogs in line. She had this look that stopped them in their tracks. She demanded respect or else. One of her favorite games with the dogs was to lay smack dab in the middle of a dog bed.

Callie grew into this meditative, contemplative, funny little cat. She calmed down over the years and became quite wise. She connected with Lorna the most (all of our cats did) and used to tell Lorna these short Zen lessons. “Yes, we are the same.” is the one Lorna will remember the most.

Callie had a chronic ear problem that a few years ago we found out was this huge mass in her ear. During the long process of getting it to shrink and get her ear healthy, we also found out she had hyperthyroid (same as her brother). By the time her ear mass had shrank, her thyroid levels made it unsafe to do surgery to remove it. The levels stayed somewhat close to norm until about a year ago when they started to climb. A test last month revealed it had jumped to 18. Normal is 1-4 and her highest up to that point had been 8-10. We switched medication and it dropped to 14. High levels such as this usually means cancer.

Meanwhile, we saw she was drooling an awful lot and the vet found a huge mass under her tongue. Again, probably cancer due to its location, shape, and size. This made it very painful for this starving cat to eat. Pain meds, anti-biotics, increased thyroid med, etc enabled her to eat soft food. And she ate a lot although she was barely 7lbs.

Then Monday Callie became unable to eat at all. She’d become more and more frantic about food. She was possessed by her hunger and now, once again, she couldn’t eat. No matter what we tried, she just couldn’t eat. Wednesday she was all over me, something she’d not done in a long time, demanding to be fed. I tried many times throughout the day to find something she would/could eat.

We’d been discussing if it were getting to be time to let her go. If it were just the thyroid or just the ear mass or just the mouth mass, we’d work with her and the vets to get it fixed. But the combination of that and her age (and she also had high blood pressure) made it such a risk. The last time we had taken her to the vet, we had discussed doing a biopsy of the mass in her mouth which would mean putting her under. Again, if it had just been that, it would have been worth the risk.

We sat with Callie in the exam room. We already knew what we should do. But we wanted her opinion. The thing was, there was still that bright light in her eyes. That energy that is our soul was so strong still! How could we snuff that out? Callie’s lesson of “Yes, we are the same.” came to Lorna then and reminded us that it wouldn’t be snuffed out, but rather released from the bonds of the physical cage that is her old body. So we sat there, asking Callie what she thought. She wandered out of the crate and looked around. Went onto the sink and sniffed the treat bottle. Then came back to the table and flopped down, classic Callie-style. And she was calm. I’d been with her all day and she’d been this frantic, driven, consumed, possessed monster. Now she was calmly laying there, purring softly. She’d given us her opinion.

Our usual vet wasn’t there but the vet that helped us was very kind, very considerate. We brought Callie home and put her next to her brother near Fort Rooster.

So, yes, they are the same. Their souls are no different from ours. Callie is free, chasing butterflies with Zeus, hissing at her brother, laying next to Skiz, and rubbing up against Sparky.

For those of you keeping count, that leaves us with one cat, Sassafras, and the 5 dogs (Casey, PopCorn, Joella, Sam, and Mike). When Mike is older, we will probably take in a mother cat as a foster and keep two of her kittens. I’m not much of a cat person but I do like having them around.

bookmark_borderUpdate #Whatever

Posted on by PaulaO

I have been properly fussed at for not saying much here lately. So here’s some updates.

– Knee is doing better. It’s only been 9 weeks but I think I expect it to be normal already. I started PT (finally!) and although it is painful and I gripe a lot, I know it is for my own good.

– Mike is great! He’s not a year yet and is on that cusp between puppy and adult. He’s still only about 50lbs but he should put on muscle mass soon. He may get to 70lbs tops. I don’t need him for weight bearing so it’ll be just fine. I keep wanting to get started on his official training but haven’t. Not sure why. My gumption level is low for most things.

– Joella has fully recovered from her own joint problems. Well, as much as she ever will. We give her an anti-inflammatory each day and she gets a ton of supplements. Joint wise, she’s doing good. Skin wise, however, she’s having a tough summer. We were late with the flea stuff and I think she is reacting to them. She’s chewed a chunk of her back raw. It’s about the size of my hand overall. She’s had several baths with lots of cool rinsing afterwards. We are using Calendula cream on the wounds and started giving her benedryl to help control the itching. No, we won’t do steroids.

– The Johnson Horde descended and retreated last week. We had a blast! Kev, Col, and Ryan went on a Segway tour of the NC Arboretum while Lorna, me, and Kelli explored the Bonsai Exhibit and explored some of the gardens; Lorna, Kev, and Ryan went to Gray, TN for a day long fossil dig while me, Col, and Kelli went to the Silver Armadillo to get beading stuff and then to the Asheville Aquarium to see the fish tanks; all of us plus a young friend went to see the Asheville Tourists (an awful game that rained so we left early); and we played Uno, talked, and laughed (usually all at once!) at the cabin they rented. At times their visit was relaxing while at others it was exhausting. I was tearful when they left but didn’t let that stop me from napping most of Friday. I wished they lived closer but perhaps the distance is why we still like each other so much.

– In June, Lorna and I celebrated our 19th anniversary. Wow. 19 yrs. Bless her heart.

– Writing – well, yes, I am writing. Truly I am. I missed the GCLS Con this year because the Johnson Horde was here at the same time (and the choice between the two was easy). I miss the battery charge I get from attending. I am working (still) on Simple Sarah. I keep wanting to make the Setting more real. At the moment, it is just a flat surface, like a green screen in the movies. I need to help the reader see what is going on behind everything.

– We have some sad news but I will share that later, perhaps tomorrow. Not ready quite yet.

bookmark_borderHump Dump Umpdate

Posted on by PaulaO

An update to this update is found at the end.

Knee: The overall pain has dropped dramatically, unless it rains then it’s a heap o’ goodness. The swelling has finally gotten to where it looks more round like a basketball and less lumpy like a football. I still can’t straighten the knee out, though. And I can balance with the toes but cannot take a step.

Hip: My hip is giving me a lot of grief. We’re trying to figure out what the problems are so we can eliminate them as much as we can. I think most of it is the entire weight of the leg is on a so-so hip socket. The tendon on the front (groin?) is very tender, hates to be moved, and isn’t happy no matter what position I try to sleep in. I can now only sleep on my back with a pillow under and to the side of that leg to position the hip and to support the un-bending knee.

Other Knee: the brace I got is great! I can wear it all day and not get the usual grossness underneath. This proves it is the latex/neoprene and it is an allergy, not heat related. The knee is very tender to the touch but it is easier to stand and hop on it now. I have a groove on the side that includes the knee cap. I’m going to have the bone doc check it out when I see him one the 23rd.

Writing: Eh, not much. Lots of ideas, though. I got Moon’s Deeds of Paksenarrion and am re-reading it. I love that book and it inspires me to write. The style is so simple, so real. There’s big info dumps because of the war strategy and stuff but overall, it is fantastic. I am re-gaining a visual image of where Sarah and crew are and that allows me to “be there” further and therefore write much more better-er.

Cats: The Tues. before I fell and broke my leg (that still sounds so weird), Lorna called me to say there were three kittens at the post office. I joined her there and we caught them. We brought them home and set them up in Mike’s Big Boy crate. They drove the dogs nuts. We had to cover the crate with a sheet at night. We knew there were going to be problems. Mike has a huge prey drive and chasing cats is fun. I could keep that under control if Sass didn’t egg him on. So when I fell and we realized how much it was screwed up, we also realized there was no way Lorna could take care of three kittens AND me AND the house AND the dogs AND our own 2 cats. So we called Mary at Asheville Pet Supply. She often finds kittens in boxes left on the store’s doorstep and has a huge cat crate set up. We called her and asked if she could take them for us and help us find homes. She did! AND then called the next day to say they’d all found homes already! All 3 went to the same home which was great. This lady decided a while back she wanted kittens but would only take any that Mary got, knowing they’d need homes. She happened to come in that morning and there they were. We’ve heard since then that they are doing great.

Dogs: Joella is now on full-time pain meds for her arthritis. She still has trouble getting up off the floor but is happier and more active. We played with the dosage for a few weeks and think we found the right amount. Mike is a handful and a half. What a teenager he is! No more snakes although there was the dead possum and the mouse. And bamboo. Lots of bamboo. And sticks. And lost toys. Lorna had to wander through the dog lot to find all the cat bowls he took outside. She has to pick them up each morning or they wander back out. Now that I’m not so stoned, I hope to re-re-restart his training again.

Friends: About a week before I fell, a close friend of ours was thrown from her horse. She broke her spine but had no spinal cord damage. She was in neuro-ICU for several days then in a room for quite some time. She’s home now and slowly recovering. It will be a long haul for her. Patti is the woman who takes care of the dogs when we both leave, like for trips up Nawth. Another friend, Elena, is doing “as good as can be expected”. Her husband is dying of cancer. Hospice has been working with them for a month or so now. The hard part for her is his mental capacity. Between the cancer and the drugs, he’s far from himself.

**I have found out that Lew died Sunday, at home where he wanted to be.

So there you have it. A big honkin’ set of updates. Did I miss anything?

bookmark_borderSNAKE!!

Posted on by PaulaO

I’m not afraid of much. Except moths. They abso-freakin’-lutely terrify me. Yes, moths.

I don’t like spiders, especially those big huge things we get around here. I am not ashamed to say that I kill them when they are in the house. Outside, hey, that’s their territory and I will gladly leave them alone. Inside the house, smush.

I am not a fan of snakes. I used to be really afraid of them but watching Animal Planet with Jeff Corwin and the late Steve Irwin has shown me that they can be good things, just not near me. And, just like the spiders, they do not belong in my house.

This afternoon I am writing away, really into what I was doing. Joella was in the bedroom and the gate was up. She wanted out so was doing her “bunny hop” thing and grumbling. Mike had been nosing me for a while and I would put down a hand to pet him but I was really really really into what I was writing. Finally I get to a place where I could stop and I put the chair in reverse, pivoted around, and prepared to get my fat butt up so I could let Jo out.

And there, right there, right there on the living floor – is a snake.

I admit that I screamed like a girl. You know the kind, the one who wanders out in her skimpy lingerie armed only with a flashlight because she heard an ax murderer was in her neighborhood. Yeah, one of those screams. My throat still hurts.

Meanwhile, Jo stops bunny hopping and Mike is happy to see I am moving. He’s not freaked out by the scream at all. I try to get him away from the snake (which was kinda curled up) but he’s dancing and I’m yelling and Jo’s doing her bunny thing again. I finally get her out of the bedroom and everyone at least out of the living room. Now what?

I see that a chunk of tail is missing and it’s got some nasty wounds that are about Mike sized. Yep, my darlin’ boy brought me a pressy. Ain’t he sweet? NOT. I call Lorna to tell her I love her before I try to scoop the snake up. She’s laughing her ass off and says she’ll be home in about half an hour to take care of it. Oh, like I could wait that long? I keep her on the phone but put it down while I use a big envelope to scoop the snake up into a bucket. The poor thing was barely alive at that point. I tell Lorna I survive and to stop laughing at me.

The snake died shortly after I moved it, if it was even still alive at that point. The movement could have been just dead body twitching stuff.

I took some pictures and hit the Internet to identify it. At first we thought it was a juvenile black snake but it wasn’t quite right. Finally I found it: an Eastern Garter Snake. Harmless just like the black snakes, they are quite common around here. I gave Mike a big lecture on not bringing toys from outside into the house. I don’t think he got the idea but it’s a start.

Lorna got home and a few minutes later, she sees that all the dogs are standing around the dog bed in the living room, staring at something Mike has. No, not another snake, but a mouse. So, no, he didn’t get the point of the lecture. Lorna took care of the mouse.


Eastern Garter Snake (image from FocusOnNature.com)

bookmark_borderJoella’s Home!

Posted on by PaulaO

We got to go pick up Joella this morning. While we were being given the long discharge instructions, we periodically heard a dog whine and moan and nearly howl. Finally I said “Somebody back there’s not happy.”

The lady looked up at me and said “That’s your Joella. She’s been talking all morning.”

She wasn’t in pain, she was just protesting I suppose. I didn’t recognize her voice because Jo doesn’t often make those noises. I had listened hard when we first heard the noises but I didn’t think it was MY dog. Ha.

Anyway, we brought my baby girl home. She’s walking fine on all four legs and they said that was fine. They don’t want her walking fast, though, nor is she to get up on furniture, play with other dogs, or jump. The list of don’ts is quite long. Right now Jo is up on the bed. She wanted in there. We put her on her new dog bed in the living room, in front of the heat, and with a blanket over her back and legs. She lay there for a while then got up and went to the bedroom. I tried to coax her into coming back out and she refused. So I helped her up on the bed (she’d’ve hurt herself less if I’d let her do it herself) and she is now sleeping like a rock.


(click for larger version)

She has a bandage on her leg from the tips of her toes to just below the knee. The bandage has to stay on for a week. It is more for compression (they use fluid instead of gas during arthroscopic surgery) than for bandaging the little puncture wounds. In a week, we take her in to get that removed and to have the wounds checked. We’ll also get a chance to talk with the vet about her future and stuff. A week later, we’ll go back to have the stitches removed and to have the range of motion checked. If she is progressing well, we can start with short walks as her rehab.


(click for larger version)

They gave us a cool photo of four images they took during the surgery. My printer is not working at the moment or I’d scan it in and share it. I know, you’re heartbroken, right? The photos show the fluffy remains of the cartilage before, during and after their work. Kinda pretty in a gross sort of way.

Oh, I guess I never said what they’d found during the surgery! What they were looking for was a “pebble in her shoe” in the form of a bit of cartilage that had come loose and was either floating around or had re-adhered in the wrong place. What they found was nothing. There’s no cartilage left except for the fluffy remains. The top of the ankle bone and the bottom of the tibia have nothing left between them. So they cleaned the remains out (it looks fluffy soft but is instead like fluffy sandpaper, slowing wearing down and scraping the bone). So Jo has osteoarthritis in her ankle. She’ll be on anti-inflammatory meds the rest of her life and will have pain. A “pebble in her shoe” would have been a fixable problem with excellent prognosis. There’s no fixing this. At least I know how to care for her since osteoarthritis is one of my main issues. I’ll know that when I am having a high pain day, she probably is, too. How ironically convenient.

bookmark_borderJoella’s Bones

Posted on by PaulaO

For about two months or so, we’ve known Joella has a problem with one or both of her back legs. Joella is very very stoic. We can never really tell if she is in pain or not feeling well unless she somehow communicates that in her special, subtle ways. Over the years, we’ve gotten (kinda) good at reading her. One of the few signs that something was wrong was she would be standing and one of her back legs would shake like mad. The other, and the one that made us realize it was something big, was she started to not want to sit down. Everyone sits prior to getting their meal and Jo was giving us weird signals, telling us she couldn’t do it.

I took her in for her yearly checkup and the vet took a good look at her back legs (and other things as well, of course). Our greatest fear was she had “blown” the cruciate ligament in her knee. She was scheduled for some dental work the next week so while Jo was asleep, they took a bunch of x-rays. Those showed that one knee was quite arthritic looking, but stable. The other one looked better but was really loose, possibly from that ligament. We got an appt. to see a veterinarian orthopedist and that appt. was today.

We really liked Dr. Crouch and felt comfortable with his opinions. He feels it is NOT her knee(s) but one of her ankles. One of the knees has a bone spur like thing that might be causing some limitation, but is not the cause of the pain or the shaking. He feels that there is something wrong like a bit of cartilage is damaged or broken off or something like that. Joella had panosteitis as a teen. It is possible, according to this vet, that this growth problem caused some of the cartilage to not fit correctly.

We then had a long lesson in canine skeletal anatomy. When I was shown what the knee was and what the ankle was, I wasn’t surprised it was the ankle that was bothering her the most. Dogs walk on their toes. Those paw pads? That’s not the bottom of their foot, that’s the padding at the base of their toes. I readily admit to not truly understanding how the human versions relate to the canine ones. It never occurred to me that they walk on their toes. Once I realized that, then the rest fell into place. I had watched how Joella walked and how she was favoring what I now know is her ankle. I also noticed that it was larger than the other.

So next Tuesday, Joella will have arthroscopic surgery on her ankle. They’ll go in there and remove whatever is causing the problem. It could be as simple as a bit broke off and has settled in the wrong place or it could be that part of the ankle will need to be removed. We’ll be able to bring her home the next day. Recovery is simple compared to the one we thought she’d have to have (TPLO). She’ll be really limited for two weeks then can begin to go on short, short walks. We’re looking at about 6-8 weeks total before she is fully recovered. (for the TPLO surgery, this is how long she would have been confined to a crate and not even started rehab!) We will spend the week cleaning up the house some and making room for a dog bed in the living room. We have one that we got for PopCorn but a second one means the other dogs won’t hog it from her. I’m not sure yet what we’ll be doing for night time. Jo sleeps on the bed at my feet. Not sure if this will be allowed or not. Once she is over the surgery, we’ll be evaluating the rest of her leg (and the other one) to see what else is wrong. The vet thinks (and we agree) that repairing the ankle is the most important. With it fixed, any problem not related to it will remain. He believes that she will be fine and we’ll be able to control her pain via arthritis medication.

Below are some anatomy images of a dog’s skeletal system. I got the first image from Wikimedia Commons and the others are just snipped from it. It only shows the skeleton and not the ligaments that go into holding it all together. The vet had some cool models to show us and they included the ligaments. Wow. They were cool. And scary. They (dogs) look so big and strong until broken down into such a defined section. So much could go wrong. One bit not working can screw up the entire area.

bookmark_borderPrevention of Cruetly to Animals Month

Posted on by PaulaO

Normally, I hear about this kind of stuff the day after it is over. But this one I actually find out beforehand!

April is the ASPCA’s Prevention of Cruelty to Animals month. Anything that helps the animals also helps us. I’d much rather support the ASPCA than PETA. Those guys scare me because while their hearts may be in the right place, their methods and reasoning are so far off the mark.

Anyway, check out your local ASPCA or similar agency and get involved!