The good news: her broken leg has healed up stronger than it would have been had it grown naturally. That’s due to the 4 pins in it, but we’re thankful she made a full recovery.

The bad news: She’s got hip dysplasia in her other rear leg. We noticed it about 6 weeks ago, she walks with that foot turned in. She runs and jumps and plays just fine, but after several visits to the vet and a month on anti inflammatories, it’s not getting any better. We’ve weighed our options and decided to go with a triple pelvic osteometry (TPO). What’s a TPO? In short they break her hip in 3 places and then reconnect it with metal braces that rotate her hip cup 25 degrees. This will allow the bone to sit in the socket without riding it’s way out when Guinness walks. As it is now, she’s turning her foot so as to position her leg to stay in the socket. But when actuated in a normal position, you can feel a very firm “pop” and hear a very firm YELP from the pup. Even on her own when she tries to scratch with that leg she’ll sometimes yip during it.

Nasty business to be sure. Recovery is just about identical to what it was with her leg break. Normally the TPO is done on dogs before 10 months, but our doc has had good results with dogs up to 2 years. Our other option was to leave it alone, but that increased the risk of knee injury at any time and pretty much guaranteed a hip replacement in her future. So while it won’t get to 100% normal, it should be significantly improved so as not to have to worry about it any more.

March 19th is the day, another 2 months and large chunk of change later she’ll hopefully be back to normal. Damn dog. Damn lovable, fluffy, happy, bouncy, licky, playful, one-of-the-better-things-to-have-happened-to-me-in-recent-times dog.

So a month ago one of the ladies of the house was rushed to the ER after too much fun in the snow. She is recovering quite well and all indications are that she'll be off leash come Tuesday to heal the rest of the way on her own. She's still got a limp, and the short fur is still a good 3 inches away from "normal" so it looks like she's lost a ton of weight on just 1/4 of her body. But all is well.

As of now, another lady of the house (the least furry of the three and the one I married) is crashed on the couch in a Percocet haze. This is the result of a planned double knee surgery to relieve some long standing pain she's been having. The doc cleaned out and smooth the cartilage and bone around her kneecap, and clip her tendons slightly so they'll heal a bit lengthened to help recenter the kneecap.

There was a bit more clean up than was originally anticipated, but he didn't need to clip nearly as much. This means that instead of being in leg braces for 5 days and then extensive physical therapy that she just has to keep her leg wraps on for 3 days, and most likely won't need any formal PT at all. Good news indeed!

In the mean time, I get to be her beck-and-call-boy (not that I'm not anyway!). But this was just a quick update for those that were not aware, or wanted a few more details.