we got a call the other day from an acquaintance who had “rescued” a dog from a bad situation and needed some help figuring out what to do. unfortunately “the dog” had a broken leg and now the rescuers had had her in their care for a week without providing any care for the leg. not knowing what else to do and realizing that this dog needed help we told them to take her to our vet the next day and we would pay to find out what exactly was wrong with the leg and what needed to happen and then we would go from there. at the time the idea was that perhaps if the care was to be extensive that we could set up a collection or something to get her what she needed. the next day i spoke to our vet after she had seen the dog and it became clear that the situation she was in needed to change. she had a badly broken leg that either needed (hopefully) pinning but possibly amputation. dave & i talked about it and decided the best thing for us to do was to take responsibility for her both financially and emotionally so arrangements were made for us to pick her up the next day and go from there.
dave was away the day/night that this all went down and i am embarrassed to admit that i just felt an overwhelming sadness, both for this dog and the situation she was in but also for us. i just did not want another dog and hadn’t planned on another dog (not that these things are always planned) – i’m just not a fan of change and this change was a little more than i felt i could handle at the time. we have just really gotten to a new normal since adding benny to the pack and things are settled and moving along smoothly so to throw a cog in that wheel really was not what i wanted. there’s also the sad fact that dave and i have not been away together for almost 2 years (i actually haven’t left the house for even a night in that time). we haven’t had a pet sitter in that time, although to be fair we haven’t made a real concerted effort to find someone up for the daunting task, but still…
i was feeling fairly downhearted when we went to pick said dog up and then we introduced her to the pack and everything was better. i have to tell you that we have some amazing dogs…i am so proud of how they accepted this little bugger and they were all just so lovely it’s amazing. “the dog," in her own right, is equally amazing as she took all the introductions in stride and was completely unphased and completely loving.
so it’s probably time for the introduction of this little lady that i’ve been rudely referring to as “the dog” so i am pleased to present violet:
she’s a female pit bull who is probably about 5-1/2 months old and she has coped amazingly well with a broken femur for over a week now (evident in the video below). i am happy to say she had surgery yesterday and our amazing vet feels very positive about the result. because of the scarring present (due to the time the fracture was given to heal on it’s own) some of her long bone had to be removed but we are hopeful she will have a fully functional, albeit shorter leg. we’ll have some tough weeks ahead trying to keep a pit puppy calm and quiet when she’s feeling better but we are thrilled to have her in our life and looking forward to a lifetime with her.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZz8WL3RJH0&fs=1&hl=en_US]