That Hope(less) dog....

I am sure there is an unwritten law known by all pet animals.... if you are going to do something stupid causing injury..... make sure the Vets is shut first....

This afternoon, shortly after I hit publish on the last blog post, I was still upstairs communing with the naked ones (well trying to persuade Hugo that bad things would happen if he leapt from the top of the study door onto my lap where his mother was enjoying a cuddle) there was a very loud cry of terror and pain from downstairs.....

Now my dogs can be quite vocal, but this was a definite "panic, panic, I'm in pain" type of cry....... not helped by the fact that it was shortly followed by at least one other dog growling and snapping......  It's amazing how fast I can get downstairs at times.....  I could see the problem as soon as I got to the bottom of the stairs..... somehow they'd managed to open the kitchen door (which I shut when I leave them in there) and Hope had made a bid for freedom over the top of the baby gate - something she's been doing since she was about 14 weeks old..... only this time she'd misjudged it and her back left leg had got stuck at the hock joint between the bars, leaving her front half hanging over the top of the gate and her right back leg flailing about in mid air.... Gretchen and Kammi, freaked out by the noises Hope was making, had decided something was terribly wrong and reacted in a way that dogs will and were attacking her trapped leg.

By the time I'd untangled her and hauled her the rest of the way over the baby gate her eyes were rolling and she was looking rather shocky.... her hock was also starting to swell quite badly.... I couldn't feel a break and the joint were stable (there are times when being a former vets assistant come in very handy) but getting the vet to check her over was on the cards.... so off we went... luckily my own vets have a weekend call out service and when I got to the surgery with her the vet on duty turned out to be the one I'd worked with in the past, so after a quick prod at her leg she confirmed what I thought, the silly dog has badly sprained her hock and is now on crate rest for a week with anti-inflammatory medication and no walks.......

Hope is not a happy dog right now, she's in pain and shut away from everyone... because I don't trust her for a minute not to try and jump even if it does hurt she's not even getting supervised time out of her crate for cuddles.... Gretchen has been sitting on my knee looking extremely smug for most of the evening.....