Rainy Wensday

I had a visitor this afternoon. Squeak came to call on his way to the vet. It's the first time he's been here since his accident almost three weeks ago. His bright blue bandage is hardly visible in this photo, but it covers a plastic splint that is attached to his left leg by something like eight steel pins. So far, he's had to have the pins replaced or reset three times, and today the vet said they had to do it again. Cathy is doing her best to keep him quiet and confined to his crate, but he's a very strong, rambunctious puppy (and a big one, too, at 8.5 months - he's part coon hound, and his coon hound parent weights 118 lbs!). They have to keep him zonked out with a combination of pain-killers, tranquillizers, and sleeping pills, but as soon as the pills wear off, he's ready to play. He didn't start out with a bandage on his leg, but he managed to chew through three of the pins even with one of those cones on his head. So now he gets a nice, new bandage (of a different color, too) every day.

I think he's going to wind up back in the doggy hospital, though, so they can keep an eye on him around the clock. Don't ask what all of this is going to cost. The vet bill is at $7,000+ and running. All of this because Cathy dropped his leash one day while scooping poop, and Squeak dashed off into the traffic by the National Mall. The truck that hit him was not going very fast. There was no big THUMP! so he didn't have any internal injuries, but the ligaments in his leg were badly torn. The vet said this is harder to treat than a broken leg.



After getting Squeak settled (?) in his visitor crate here, Cathy sat down at the kitchen table to work on another book. We both called in sick today....she's recovering from a cold, and my eye with its new plastic lens has been acting cockeyed for a couple of days. I keep forgetting to put the drops in on time. God knows why they work, but they do - if I remember them, that is. So I had a nice, quiet rainy day at home with the added benefit of two special favorite visitors to keep me company (and prevent me from working crossword puzzles till my eyes cross!)