Ahti's Boo Boo

I think I'm breeding accident prone dogs.

Foundation stock all good and first generation trying to kill themselves.  The first year of Libby's life was full of many bodily injuries, and now Ahti.

Ahti somehow badly hurt her leg.  In her kennel we think.  We're not sure how she did it, but some imagination gives us some ideas.  Regardless, she came out of her kennel in the morning dead lame on a front leg.  We also considered that she may have hurt it training the day before and not shown any signs at the time.  We just don't know.  Regardless, she was non weight bearing and that is always a concern.

We sat on it for one day to see if she had a minor injury.  I palpated it and manipulated it and got no response, so I felt nothing was broken.  When she was no better the following morning, we took her in to the vet.  We got a referral to an ortho specialist the following morning after that.  We were told, by the first vet, that she possibly had a dislocated wrist (carpus) and might need surgery involving fusion of the joint and plates and pins put in her leg.

Ahti's career might have been over before it started.  I was a little devastated, but tried to keep positive.

We went to the ortho specialist this morning and received great news!  She basically has a badly sprained ankle.  Very badly sprained.  He put her in a cast and we hope we can remove it in two weeks and then spend some time rehabbing her back to training over a period of time.  She should be out two months-max, but not even that long.

He told me her saving grace was that I brought her in so soon.  I didn't think 72 hours after injury was very soon, but he assured me that I was much faster then most people whose dogs suffer these types of injuries.

What I loved about this vet is that he was an old-timer, who was obviously very knowledgable.  He was an orthopaedic professor at the Texas A & M vet school and was well versed in his subject obviously.  But what impressed me most was that he went straight to Ahti and spent a great deal of time assessing her and her injury without yet referring to her x-rays.  I always told my paramedic students to "treat the patient and not the machines" and loved seeing someone as knowledgeable as him not need machines to make a thorough and accurate evaluation.  After this, he then referred to her x-rays to confirm his thoughts.  I was awe-struck and somewhat smitten.

Here is Ahti with her cast this evening.  She thinks she's living large being back in the house and she'll be spoiled rotten.  While I'd love to have every dog in the kennel inside, it's just not possible, so she has now become one of the "chosen ones" that gets to come in every night.

And no, she is not possessed...I just used my iPhone to take the picture.

The moral to my story is two-fold...

1)  I have always believed, in both human and canine medicine, that one needs to find the "guy" when cases such as these arise.  Whoever the "guy" is...find him/her and heed his/her words.  General practitioners are wonderful and I respect their work immensely, but if I would have followed a general practitioner's advice with Ahti, then I would have had someone trying to reduce an ankle that wasn't dislocated to begin with.  Seek out the "guy"...and do whatever it takes to go see them.  15 years in Emergency Medical Services led me to this conclusive long before I found out it was the same in Veterinary Medicine.

and

2) If you have a first generation Elmingo dog...wrap it in bubble wrap.