So, it's been a while since I posted anything--my first year of full time teaching is almost over and, while I won't claim to have that much more free time, I do want to update my blog more often. The good news for the two of you who still read this is that my life isn't very exciting right now (if it ever was), so you haven't missed much.
After the crazy snow, we had an uneventful rest of February and March with the exception of a wild and crazy spring break spent in Texas and Kansas. McKenna spent most of the winter like this on my bed:
At the beginning of April, I was in my yard raking up those spiky balls that fall from sweet gum trees when I heard McKenna scream. When I turned around, she was on the ground crying and a squirrel was running the other direction. At first, I thought she was chasing the squirrel and ran over one of the sweet gum things and got a sticker in between the pads of her paw. She couldn't walk, so I picked her up and carried her into the house and figured that I would give her aspirin for the pain and keep her immobile until she got better. She seemed to get better and then she would start limping again and that went on for about three weeks. There was never any swelling, I couldn't find anything stuck in her paw, couldn't feel anything broken or out of place, no cuts, etc. Since she was due for her yearly exam, I took her to the vet and asked them to take a look at her leg.
The vet said that he thought she might have torn her ACL, but they had to sedate her and do some x-rays to really see what was going on. They told me that they wanted to go ahead with surgery if she did have a torn ACL so that they wouldn't have to sedate her more than once. So, the next day, she had the surgery, which is apparently a very common surgery for dogs. I was able to pick her up the following day and they gave me this:
Obviously, she was not pleased by the shaved leg and collar, but she was definitely glad to be home. She has to wear the collar for two weeks, which means that it will come off on Wednesday when she has her stitches removed. Here she is today, now that she's a little more used to her new look:
Aunt Leah sent her a new crab collar as a get well gift and she's been saving it for when she gets this plastic collar off this week. In the meantime, this has been an interesting experience--she had two antibiotics to take along with a pain pill and I think the pain medication made her anxious. We've had some terrible storms here in the past week and a half, including a night of tornado warnings. That night, I had to haul her with the collar into the shower in the guest bathroom, which has a doorway that is about 12 inches wide (the collar is about 18 inches wide, so we had to back in), and we had to sit in there for about an hour until the storm subsided. For the rest of that night and the next, she kept me up almost all night. She usually doesn't get too scared of thunder, but I think the medication must have made her nervous. I tried to lift her into bed with me and calm her down, but that just resulted in her plastering herself against me trembling and screaming with the plastic collar smacking me in the face. We eventually got about two hours of sleep and I was really grateful that I didn't have to teach the next day.
So, she took the last of her medication yesterday and is doing very well. We see the vet on Wednesday and hopefully she'll get a good report. The goal is to get her well enough to go to Kansas in two weeks, so wish us luck. I'll try to post an update on Wednesday after we see the vet.
