Cruciate Disease

Bugger! Yep my lovely girl is broken. This Cruciate ripping is most common in dogs between 6 and 8 years old, so she should have been in the clear, but sadly that's not her story.

So after a week or maybe 2 of limping around, like I was doing before I got me some new knees, all the while, slurping up serious pain meds to no avail - her not me, it was finally off to the Vet.

He had a good fiddle - don't be rude, and gave us the verdict we had been trying very hard to ignore. We had all but convinced ourselves that the problem was the quality of the pain meds we bought online, instead of the stuff from the Vets because it was just so much cheaper. Steve was ready to have it tested to see what was in it. Yep we wanted to blame something, anything.

But it seems pretty clear that by just being herself, her leg has failed. Bugger indeed!

Next Thursday will be the start of a new life for our girl.

The operation fills me with an appalling deja vu. And I am aware that she will be in terrible pain afterwards. We need to get out heads around how we are gonna manage post surgery, because at the moment she is self moderating, well as much as a running chasing anything and everything dog can be. But after the surgery we are gonna have to set the rules and the limits and I am pretty sure that the willfulness of her is gonna prove to be problematic.

Mark the Vet, said she should be confined in a tiny room, and that would mean the downstairs bathroom, but I just can't see isolating her from her family. She would not do well not being where we are. We see that she needs to be contained and so we are gonna try to tether her to the dining table so she can be with us. Her bed can be right there too and her water and food bowl. Mark the Vet said we will need to put her on the lead to take her out for pees and poos, which she will not like cos you, know she's almost human and does enjoy a modicum of privacy when shitting.

But the biggest problem will be when we disappear up to bed. 

She will not be best pleased to be left on her own downstairs, but even if we managed to carry her up to bed - a squirming 28 kgs would be a challenge,  I couldn't trust that she will stay there. I can already hear her running down the stairs to chase a whatever, in the park. It might be that the couch will call us for a while anyway.

She will of course be sedated for the first little while, but as her leg improves, so too will her determination strengthen. She is a willful, strong minded, single minded, too often bloody minded Dog. Don't know where she learnt all that.  6 weeks of sedate, in house slothing about, will be a struggle for all of us.

I hope she forgives us.