Bander, the Bionic Dog

You may have noticed we haven't mentioned anything about Bander getting the cast off yet. After a week with no improvement, we shelled out money for some MRI soft tissue scans, and learned that the damage to his wrist was a lot worse than anyone thought - as in, he snapped every single connecting ligament.

That gave us three options, per the vet - one, very expensive surgery. Two, amputation of the leg. Three, put him down. Since both two and three were impossible, unthinkable, and just generally not happening, we went for the expensive surgery. This involved fusing the affected joint and inserting a steel plate to stabilize the whole thing.

It's been eight weeks now, and here are the first x-rays of the nearly-healed repair job:































Impressive, no?

The downside is that we still aren't allowed to walk him much, and he needs another four weeks in the cast. He always had a lot of energy to burn, and has a bad case of cabin fever, so any little behavioral problems are magnified a million times. The separation anxiety that caused him to jump off the roof in the first place? Yikes. Bring on the puppy Prozac! (so not kidding, here.) And some training. And he needs company while we're at work.

So. He now has a vet, an orthopedic surgeon, a behaviorist, and a pet sitter. The freakin' dog has a staff of FOUR. I, of course, just have Jesse, but since he only has me we just order each other around a lot and nothing gets actually done, because we're too busy catering to the dog.

It's a good thing he's cute.