Warranty Dog goes thump

[newguy]

I feel your pain Anthony!!!
About 3 weeks ago we had the unfortunate luck that MAE "aka Warranty Dog" managed to break her left rear leg. The thing fell out of my boat on the trailer in the damn driveway. she was trying to get into a garbage can with Turkey remains inside .
Off to the Emergency vet clinic. Surgery required.... estimated $4000 A vote was taken (I wasn't allowed a vote)
3 days of waiting to have a surgeon available Then 10 screws, a surgical plate and several xrays later we brought her home.You have to keep her quiet for 6 weeks and little or no stairs
Someone should really have told the dog this.... within 3 days of the drugs wearing off she wants to wrestle with Red and has gotten over just about every obstacle we put in place to keep her on the ground floor level.She has been banished to her kennel for the majority of her time to heal.
So other than Anthony's and my two idiots, how many other clumsy working dogs we got on the site

[crockett]

Sorry to hear Gary - that sounds like a bad one. Don't try to kid us that your vote would have been any different - I ain't buyin' it! Hope for a full and speedy recovery.

Ruby's issues arise from some clumsiness over the past 7 years. At some point she appears to have damaged her right "wrist" and her left elbow. The right wrist swells up after a big hunt, but quickly returns to normal, especially if I sneak up on her and vet-wrap an ice-pack onto it when we get home. The left elbow is proving to me more problematic. I think that she did this in 2010, when she developed a really bad limp that put her out of comission for the season. At that point, it was diagnosed as a herniated disc in her neck, but my guess is that there was actually an injury to her elbow. Some arthritis has flared up around the injury, which is what is causing the problems now. NSAIDs such as Metacam or Deramaxx help a lot, but they're hard on kidneys/liver, so we're exploring other options. Unfortunately, the athritis around the injury site has progressed to a point that our options are limited, but our vet is bringing orthoscopic methods to his clinic, which may give us some options to go in there and smooth things out a bit. Once the season is over they're going to fish a scope and a "smoother" in there to see what can be done. Some options include:
1. Nothing can be done. This will mean lots of NSAIDs, short hunts, and early retirement.
2. Clean up the joint, especially if there is a fractured coronoid process that can be removed fromt he joint.
3. In combination with #2, the biceps tendon can be "weakened" (cut) where it attaches to the ulna, to reduce torsion on the joint.
We'll see. It would be sad to retire Ruby early, as she really has just come into her own in the past few years and is truly a pleasure to hunt over, especially for pheasants. Also, there is some spousal resistance to becoming a two-dog family, so that would be a battle to fight another day. For now, it's all about trying to find a solution for Ruby. Meanwhile, even on limited activity, the old girl has managed to put three pheasant limits into my vest, so she's still doing OK!
-Croc

[newguy]

Ya you are probably right Croc,
With all the time and training we put in they become more than a hunting tool they are almost like our kids.
Hopefully they all get to heal up and spend tons more time out and about with us----until they get into something and injure themselves again
I keep trying to convince my kids they want to become Vets so far they ar not convinced

[mark]

Not a working dog, but Erin the girl from our shop her Boxer pushed her beagle out the truck window doing 80 a couple of months ago which broke the beagle's rear leg and required skrews and a plate.