puppy injury, dope, and goop

Friday evening before dark Minnie sat up at attention and when I opened the storm door she dashed outside taking off after one of the black and white cats that we see around here. The cat with Minnie in hot pursuit disappeared beyond the side of the barn. A few minutes later Minnie came back hobbling along on three legs refusing to put her back right leg down. I examined her leg and foot not finding anything stuck between the pads of her foot or feeling anything obviously wrong with her foot or leg. She made no vocal or physical reaction to my manipulations but refused to use the leg the rest of the night. 

Saturday morning she still refused to set her leg on the ground and now there was some swelling just past the ankle on the foot side. 

I called the vet I normally take her to but they are only open a half day on Saturday and couldn’t or wouldn’t work her in. Monday morning was the earliest I could get her in. So then I called the other vet in town that is open all day on Saturday and is generally more expensive and their walk in fee is really high but they would work her in. So I took her there and didn’t have to wait very long. The vet examined her; hip seems fine, knee seems fine, he felt around the swollen spot and elicited a couple of whines from her and determined it could be a torn ligament or a fracture. I could get the x-ray then or wait. If it improved by Monday she likely wouldn’t need an x-ray. He thought that waiting until Monday even if it was a fracture would be fine since he couldn’t feel an obvious break. If it is a fracture, he’ll splint it to stabilize it while it heals. They gave her a shot for pain and sent me home with pain pills. Sunday morning there has been no change and I’m pretty sure it’s a fracture and now I’m wishing I had gone ahead and had the x-ray yesterday. She's been either in my lap or laying next to me since it happened.

Rocky finally came by the end of last week and gooped up the threaded end of the plug on the drain field pipe and I started filling the trench back in. Friday I got all the rest of my little seedlings in the ground that I have room for; 4 yellow squash, 6 cucumbers, and the rest of the nasturtiums. The onions have all come up, carrots too but fewer of those, far less than half the seed I put in. the tomatoes are growing and blooming though we had a cold front blow in yesterday and it got down in the 40s last night. I finished filling in the trench yesterday.

Thursday at SHARE one of the volunteers brought in two boxes of this stuff that somehow her church had acquired. One of the Elders that volunteer opened one and it looked like a cross between rancid peanut butter and baby poop and smelled about what it looked like. He stuck a finger in and tasted it and said it tasted about how it looked. Then he read the back of the package.

Turns out it’s for people with feeding tubes. It all went in the trash.

To end with something a little more pleasant, the mock dogwood/orange is in full bloom.