Back home and decked out in shocking pink!

Alice and I went to pick up Audrey at 4. We didn’ t leave the vet til 6. We had to wait for Dr. Canapp to finish surgery so he could talk with us. His assistant, Lisa, gave us the lowdown on her post-operative care and let us play around with one of the ring fixators so we could master turning the screws.

This is me listening intently to Lisa, Dr. Canapp’s surgical assistant, give me information about Audrey’s care.

Well, this is going to be fun. The 3 pills a day, regular cleaning of the area where the pins go into her leg and return visits to check the recovery are the easy part. What will be hard is keeping this puppy down. She can’t run or do stairs, but we have to encourage her to walk on her leg. She can’t jump on anything, or down from anything. So when she’s with us we make sure that she’s not overdoing it; when she’s not, she has to be in the crate.

And then there’s the really fashionable Elizabethan collar she’ll wear to keep her from licking the stitches. She loves it (hardly).

But she looks great and the doctor reported that she did very well. Her foot should be more swollen considering the surgery, but it almost looks like the other one. She tolerated the anaesthesia well and should respond well to treatment. She’ll be in this contraption (sorry, pictures soon) for 6-8 weeks. The pins gets turned for a week, but the cuff deal stays on like a cast while the bones are healing.

Since the darn thing must be pretty heavy to her, and it sure is bulky (think, wearing an inflated inner tube on one of your legs) they padded it and wrapped it in shocking pink plastic-y bandages. No hunter’s going to miss this puppy out in the woods.

Here’s Alice holding Audrey just before we left for home after her big day on the surgery table:

The great surprise – well, two actually – was that Dr. Canapp took lots of pictures of the procedure. He did this intentionally to share with me, hearing that I was documenting the whole thing. I’ll post a special page of pix when they arrive. The other nice thing was that the cost wasn’t more than the estimate. I thought that when he did the extra work on her wrist he said was necessary due to increased flexing and that he worked on her for 2 1/2 hours that I’d pay more than I expected. Not so. Still is a bite but at least the sting was expected.

Here’s a tip for you pet owners – GET PET INSURANCE! It was never recommended to me and the last I thought about it (at least 10 years ago) it was cost prohibitive. But now its like $20 a month. A woman at the vet’s office said she pays about $525 a year for two dogs. I’m getting it right away – Audrey still have to abandon her femaleness later in the year and with the way she inhales anything on the floor I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a stomach pumping or xray in our future. Plus the kitties may have problems.

Thank you all for your kind thoughts through this. The little girl is sleeping peacefully next to me on the floor, resting her new double bracelet on her bed. I’ll probably give her a pain pill to help us all get a good night sleep.

Susan