“All right, we’ll drink to our legs”

So, a while back I wrote about an injury Hobbes sustained back when he was running in our yard. Well, this has been a long time developing and the story still isn’t done.

As a refresher: Hobbes came up whimpering and lame while running in our yard. We thought he had clipped a tree or hit the fence, but even then I wasn’t sure how that would have resulted in a fracture in his ankle, given how glancing the blow would have been on that particular day. We have since concluded that he likely had a lingering injury from the race track that just happened to go on that particular day.

Treatment started with six weeks or so all wrapped up like that, with us having to help Hobbes hobble out to the street to do his business. When we went in for the checkup at the end of that, it turned out that he had healed somewhat, but not enough–and worse, the constant wrapping of his leg had left him with some nagging sores, which meant infection. At this point it was seeming likely that surgery was in his future…and surgery of this type can’t be done in Buffalo, because there simply aren’t any local specialist vets with experience in this sort of thing.

Another vet took over and did some treatments using sound waves to hopefully stimulate bone growth. We did this for another six weeks or so, and it did work…but not well enough. We determined that surgery to fuse the broken bone in the ankle was the way to go. So now we were contacting specialist vets, including at Cornell University in Ithaca, or a clinic in Mississaugua, outside Toronto. We ended up scheduling the surgery with a vet in Pittsburgh, and last week, down he went (with The Wife and The Daughter) for the procedure. (This was exciting in itself, as the weather in the 716 last week was not conducive to going much of anywhere.)

So, last Thursday they got him to this vet in Pittsburgh for the pre-surgery consultation–and here we actually got some good news: the ankle has actually continued healing, to the point that this vet thinks surgery wasn’t warranted at this time. The problem now is the sore on his leg; greyhounds have trouble healing when it comes to sores on their legs because they simply don’t have much skin down there to work with. While he isn’t getting the fusion surgery at this time (it is an option later on), the sore needs to be monitored for healing. The doc did a procedure to close it as best he could, and now, believe it or not, Hobbes has to go to Pittsburgh twice a week for four to six weeks. Ouch.

For all that, Hobbes is doing pretty damned well. His mood is good, he is becoming obsessed with car rides, and his appetite is impressive. We’ve had him about six months, which is roughly when new greyhounds start to really come out of their shell and show their personality. Hopefully once spring arrives we’ll finally have a fully healthy greyhound who does all the greyhoundy stuff.

Hopefully!

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