The Beast and the Bug

Katy seems to be healing well from her surgery on Friday. Piper Ann had two knee replacements (bilateral tibial tuberosity advancements) for the same knee injury, although my parents elected to do a different surgery to fix Katy's knee(extracapsular repair), it's been interesting for me to compare the two girls healing. Katy is just starting to touch her toe to the ground while walking. In comparision, I'm pretty sure Piper Ann was ready to do cart wheels at four days post-op. On the other hand, Katy's range of motion is much better than Piper's was at this stage. Katy can fully extend her leg and almost completely fold it back in again. Katy also has less bruising and swelling.

The medical geek in me is enthralled.

Needless to say, being twelve years old, eight pounds, and gimpy, Katy can't tolerate any rough handling. Our plan was to do total crate and rotate with our dogs and Katy: no contact with the herd at all. But as it turns out, such extreme measures haven't been necessary. It helps that Katy is stone out of her gourd on happy pain pills, and therefore not prone to getting excited by the other dogs. But I've also been pleasently surprised at how well mannered the herd has been.

Including Rubi.

Believing that the dogs understand that Katy is injured and needs to be handled gently seems too altruistic an answer. Instead, it's more likely that she's just not that interesting. Katy has been a regular fixture in Piper, Maus, and Allister's lives since they were puppies. Couple that with her lack of interesting response when prodded, and those three are off to find more entertaining pursuits, like trying to figure out how to chew through aluminum cans to get to the meaty center.

Rubi has not known Katy her whole life, and of the three dogs, she's shown the most interest in the bug. Rubi has, and I say this with no little amount of pride, behaved exactly as I would expect from a normal dog. Better yet, she is behaving as I would expect from one of my dogs (because you know if you've been reading the blog that my dogs - nor I - are nowhere in the vicinity of normal). Rubi is interested: she sniffs and she nuzzles and when she gets That Look, I tell her to back off - and she does! It's not perfect. Rubi needs a fair amount of support from me to maintain her good manners, and I'm certainly not going to leave her and the bug alone together. But she's willing to leave the new dog alone at just a word from me. Awesome.

Good girl, beast.