Straydog UPDATE posted MONDAY 2/3/03 at ~10:00 p.m. CT

Pat Arnold's Daily Dog Log

MONDAY FEBRUARY 3 2003

Rottweiler Betsy (sister of Rottweiler Buddy and daughter of Rottweiler Trixie) breaks her leg!

      This was to be the morning for taking four dogs to our clinic just to be spayed and neutered. All I had to do was drop them off and pick them up tomorrow. Then I could get back to responding to the many of you I owe letters to.

      I was still in the house, just about to go outside to help put Justin, Brigitte, Gidget and Old Davey in their separate traveling crates in the van, when I heard a loud yelp of pain coming from one of the kennels on the north side of the park [left side of the hexagon-shaped play yard (or "park") in the photo above]. Immediately all the dogs at Straydog began barking loudly. This alarm tells us that some dog has been hurt.

      Bill and I flew outside just as all of our employees were running to Betsy and Buddy's kennel [furthest left adjacent to the park in the photo above]. Rhonda, who had been in the play yard in the middle of her routine of taking sets of dogs to (and from) the park for their playtime, and who was the kennel team/caregiver person closest to Buddy and Betsy's kennel at that moment, yelled into her walkie-talkie that Betsy was hurt! "Hurry!" The yelp, the barking and Rhonda's shout brought everyone out there (with or without a walkie-talkie).

      The six of us all got there at almost the same time and saw that Betsy was holding up her right leg, her paw just dangling. It looked broken! Buddy, her big brother, who weighs well over 100 pounds, was running back and forth in a frenzy. Not only was he worried about his sister being hurt, but all the dogs always get excited at dog walk time (which is really playtime in the park), and some of them run anxiously back and forth, up and down their fence line as they are waiting for their turn, and we thought that maybe Buddy had bumped into Betsy hard, or maybe Betsy had caught her foot somehow in the chain-link fence and had maybe twisted it badly as she turned to go in the opposite direction [which is what most probably had happened we found out later].

      Randy gently picked Betsy up and carried her several hundred feet to the van, where Tina had a crate already waiting with door open for Betsy. Randy gently slid Betsy into the travel kennel. Betsy must weigh about 75 pounds. We quickly put the other dogs in their crates, and off Bill and I and the (now) five dogs went to the clinic.

The leg is broken

      As soon as we arrived at the clinic, Dr. Morton gave Betsy a drug to relax her, and when she was totally drowsy, he examined her leg feeling the break, and then he took x-rays, which he showed us a few minutes later. Betsy's leg was definitely broken due to an extreme twist, which had separated the bone length-wise in two places that would require screws to pull the bone back together and a plate to keep it together.

      Tomorrow the doctor will operate, and when Betsy recovers from this surgery enough to come home from the clinic, she will have to stay in one of our recovery kennels in the house for the next eight to 10 weeks. (Luckily Molly has recovered completely from her benign tumor surgery, and has moved back into her outside kennel with her buddy Max.)

      The vet techs carried sleeping Betsy to her kennel in the hospital portion of the clinic to await her surgery early tomorrow morning. After Dr. Morton's explanation of how he intends to do the surgery on Betsy, we brought in the other dogs to leave them for their spay/neuter operations.

BUT WAIT! Another dog needs to see the doctor!

      The receptionist called me over to the desk just as Bill and I were about to leave the clinic and said our employee, Tina, was on the phone.

      Tina said that Trixie (the mother of Buddy and Betsy, who lives in a kennel across the park from her children [because of a long, long story, which is back in past editions somewhere]) had something very wrong with her eyes, and Tina wanted to know if she should bring Trixie to the clinic? I, of course, told Tina we would wait at the clinic.

      Tina arrived with Trixie a half hour later, and Trixie's eyes did look bad--very watery and gooey. They had been fine yesterday! The doctor examined Trixie and said she probably has pink eye, or some other type of infection, and we came home with antibiotic eye drops that we have to administer every four hours during the day.

Keeping this place running is very, very difficult

      As Randy (our kennel manager) said when we got home from the clinic, "Anyone who thinks that working at our shelter with rescued dogs is an easy thing to do, has a lot to learn!" While we were gone Randy found one of the links in the chain-link kennel fence in Betsy's kennel ripped loose, and he's going to fix the problem so she won't break another leg the same way.

Late update at 6:30 p.m. 

     This is now the end of a very busy day that starts about 3:30 a.m (winter hours). It's after six-thirty p.m. now. Old Granny Snowflake has not been feeling well all day long, which is a big worry, and I just came in from taking Snowy outside to go potty. Then I went to diabetic Julie's kennel and gave Julie her insulin and meal. After that I went to Happy and Rover's kennel to put a new heat lamp (since we're having 30-degree temperatures again tonight) in their heat lamp fixture to replace the one that had burned out. Then I went to Trixie's kennel at the opposite end of our shelter campus to give Trixie the next (and last) dose of eye drops for the night.

      Today we raised the vet bill by a tremendous amount. We've just added four spay and neuter operations (for Brigitte, Gidget, Justin and Old Davey), Betsy's leg surgery for her broken leg, and Trixie's eye examination, and the cost of eye drops, along with Trixie's yearly vaccinations, which were due.

      And now we have the worry about Betsy with her broken leg, having to stay in a big recovery kennel in our living room for the next eight to 10 weeks.

      Caring for the many dogs at our no-kill shelter is nowhere even near an easy thing to do. Bill and I have not taken a break since about 1992. And won't until the overpopulation problem is solved.