The Monday morning after . . .

One bright side of the Katie ACL saga is that it will give us something to blog about here in the warm weather months.

Yesterday we held our annual birthday party for my daughter Julia, complete with our annual early season plunge into Taughannock Creek behind the house (pics to follow?). But prior to the party I picked up a lightweight ex-pen for Katie to lounge about in whether indoors or out. Our friend Barb took these shots of Katie during the party.

Jim again: The second incision above the leg was where the vet removed a non-cancerous skin growth. Treatment for the leg right now consists of doggie hydrocodone. In another couple of days she'll be taking Deramaxx as an anti-inflammatory--right now she still has aspirin left in her system and so can't be on the Deramaxx until that's gone.

She gets an icepack on the leg several times a day, leg massage several times a day, and I'm gently doing range of motion exercises with her several times a day. Those are the hardest as she is still quite sore. But I'm trying to be pretty religious about it in the hopes of getting her back in the field at as close to 100% as we can get.

While it may be in poor taste to mention the Dogge Shopping Department, I did learn from Nancy Thurston that she has already bred and placed her litter for this year. She did give me some idea of her predicted breeding plans for next year, so I'm seriously giving that some thought. No word yet from Al Stewart in Michigan, but given the time of year I'm sure he may be busy with breeding bird stuff. I may try to get an actual phone number from Safari Jim so that I can call Al.

Katie gets the sutures out next week and will get a checkup from the vet and physical therapist at that time (mainly to measure range of motion). Contrary to some of the stuff I've read on the web, she won't start really intensive physical rehab therapy until 6-8 weeks after the surgery.

Well, that's about it for now. No turkey hunting for me yet this season, and probably not highly likely at this point--but you never know.