Rusty - Booh Bear

Some of you may know that we have been taking care of Rusty - Tony, Kristen, and Madison's puppy - until they find out where they are going to be stationed next. Well, two weeks ago (March 1) early Saturday morning, Rusty and Angel (our dog) both went outside and Rusty was hit by a car. I wasn't at home, but Mom and Dad were able to get him to the Emergency Animal Hospital in about 30-45 minutes. It was really scary to begin with when we found out what all was wrong. Initially, we were told that he had a dislocated hip and that was all. Well, later they found that he had a ruptured spleen so he had to have surgery done that day to have his spleen removed. The ruptured spleen leaked fluid into his abdomen so there was a chance that he could get an infection. He also had a lot of bruising on his underside.

--This happened the Saturday before Mom and I were supposed to leave on Tuesday to go to Washington.--

He had to stay at the Emergency Animal Hospital over the weekend and Mom and I went a visited him a lot. He had an IV in, his temperature was low, and his red blood cell count was low. It was a tough weekend. We picked him up Monday morning and transferred him to our local Animal Hopsital. At that point he was doing better, but he wasn't eating and his red blood cell count was still low. We arranged for him to be able to stay a few days extra at the Animal Hospital so that he could get the extra care he needed and so that Mom and I could still go on our trip. We called and checked on him everyday, and we were really confident that he was being taken really good care of. We could tell that he had a great doctor and all the ladies and the Animal Hospital absolutely fell in love with him.

We brought him home this past Monday (March 10). He was so happy to be home, he was able to hobble over to us at the Animal Hospital with his tail wagging like crazy. As of now, he still has a dislocated hip, a fractured pelvis, and a bandaged rear paw. He had most of his staples taken out Friday (March 14), but a few had to stay in to finish healing. The doctors are waiting for his fractured pelvis to heal on its own before they go in and do surgery to fix his dislocated hip. His paw is bandaged due to "dead skin sloughing off," and we have to take him in every other day to have his bandages changed. All of his bruising is almost completely gone, he's almost done with all of his antibiotics, anti-inflammatory medicine, and we found out that his red blood cell count is back up and really, really close to where it needs to be.

He's in really good spirits and he wants to move around and be wherever we are, so it's difficult to keep him from walking around too much. We have to keep him still because the more he walks around the longer it will take for his fractures to heal. Right now we are trying to find a puppy food that he will eat, because he's not interested in his old dog food and until we find something he will eat we have to "force feed" him through a syringe.

I think I've covered everything. He's been through an awful lot the past couple of weeks and he still has a pretty long road to full recovery, but he's doing really good. His doctor brags on him every time she sees him and all the ladies at the Animal Hospital love seeing when he comes for check-ups. He's such a happy puppy it'll be great when he can run around play like he wants to so bad.