Day Two--Vet Visit

At this point, we had yet to agree on a name as a family...but I'm going to go ahead and start referring to her as Sofi, since that's what we ended up with.

Sofi did not want to come out of her crate, and with her mobility issues, I realized the crate was probably not the best setup for her. We removed the foam bed from the crate and just put that on the floor instead. She was obviously not going to be going anywhere anytime soon, and this made it easier to ease her into a standing position to coax her out the back door for bathroom attempts.

We had our first house training success around mid-morning! But getting her in and out the sliding glass door has been difficult. She did not understand the concept of glass at all and has run right into it in a fit of fear on several occasions so far, during the in and out process. She is very easily shaken and we are learning to be absolutely calm no matter what she does--including when she has started to eat her poop. I kind of lunged at her to pull her away the first time she did it and she totally freaked out, almost falling through the window well grate and knocking over a table (sidenote--apparently, poop-eating, or coprophagia, is a common disorder in puppy mill dogs. Hopefully we'll be able to get beyond this one quickly....yuck.)

The other animal residents have been making the rounds to meet Sofi. SlinkyBob is particularly interested in her and has sat with her on a few occasions.

She spent the day sleeping for the most part, and we continued to carry her out for bathroom breaks periodically.

At 4:30, Andre and Addison loaded her up in the car and headed for the vet. I had a whole list of questions that I sent with them, but it became apparent right away that they were trivial in comparison to the most pressing issue--her right hip.

They x-rayed her and found that her pelvis had been crushed at some point in the past, and her right rear femur was completely disconnected from the hip socket--just floating in scar tissue I guess. This had all been healed for a long time, but not in a good way. The vet did not think that putting the femur back into the socket was an option, given the mess her pelvis was, but she would need a major surgery to possibly take off the top of the femur and shorten her leg at least. I guess we'll find out more about the possibilities next week. He said she had all kinds of structural issues in the rest of her body--spine, front legs, etc. from being off-kilter for such a long time.

This was hard news for all of us to hear. I really didn't want her problems to include orthopedic stuff, due to the expense and pain potential. And of course the hardest part is wondering what horrible trauma she sustained to give her injuries of this severity, and how long she must have existed in excruciating pain as her bones healed back together into a jigsaw mess. They got her home to her bed and we gave her the first dose of Rimadyl.

I got her up around midnight for a trip outside. Still had to carry her, and no success outside. But at 4am, she was up and out the door like a shot! She peed and pooped outside and ran back in! The Rimadyl makes such a big difference!