Straydog UPDATE posted THURSDAY 9/18/03 at ~8:00 p.m. CT

Bill Arnold's Daily Straydog Log

THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 18 2003

Bobby goes to Dallas for his final checkup

     Bobby knew something was up when we brought him out of his kennel this morning. (He's been back in with his mother and sister for a couple of days now.) And when he realized he was walking toward the car rather than the park, he stopped in his tracks, and I had to carry the 70-pounder the rest of the way to the car. (Bobby and his sister, Briar, were rescued with their mother several years ago when the pups were just about 10 weeks old. Because they had had no contact with humans for those first many weeks of their lives, both dogs have always been very fearful of everyone and everything.)

"Why are they bringing me out of my kennel alone?" Bobby wonders.

     Today's trip to the Dallas Veterinary Surgical Center (where Bobby had his torn knee ligament repaired a couple of months ago) was 85 miles each way. We arrived just in time for our appointment, but Bobby wouldn't get out of his crate in the back of my station wagon. I finally was able to gently pull him out and set him on the concrete of the parking lot, but he wouldn't budge from there, so I had to pick him up and carry him inside the building and into the elevator.

I set Bobby down in the elevator to be able to snap this picture.

     When we got to our floor and the elevator door opened, Bobby still wouldn't move an inch, so I picked up all 70 pounds of him and carried him to the doctor's office. Once inside the waiting room I set Bobby down and he walked straight over to the far wall and cowered against it.

The chair in the foreground is the same one Pat was sitting in with Emily on her lap on May 30--Pat's last photo.

"What are they going to do to me this time?"

     After about a half-hour wait the doctor saw us, felt Bobby's leg, checked his range of motion and said he's doing fine. I told her that only recently had Bobby started putting weight on his leg, and she said that that was good and that he should continue to improve. The doctor also suggested that it would do Bobby good to swim in a deep pool, and I told her we'd look into that, but at the same time I was thinking all we could afford were the small seven-dollar kiddie pools you get at Wal-Mart.

     After his examination Bobby once again wouldn't budge. And now he was beginning to have bowel problems. I think the doctor spent more time cleaning up Bobby's continuing mess than she had spent examining the poor scared fellow. Finally a young man in a technician's uniform came with a table on wheels, and he lifted Bobby onto the table and wheeled him out, down the hall, down the elevator and out of the building into the parking lot. As soon as we got close to the car and opened the back, Bobby tried to get up and jump over into his crate. We helped him across, and I slipped his leash off and we were on our way home. During the 85-mile trip back home Bobby upchucked his breakfast, but when we pulled in to the gate closest to his area, Bobby got all exited and wouldn't wait to get out of the car and onto the ground and he walked full speed back first to the park, where he had a long-held outburst of diarrhea, and then he walk/ran straight back to his mother's kennel.

Back home in his family's kennel Bobby looks like he's thinking, "If I never have to go to the doctor again, it'll be too soon!"