My Initiation As a Farm Girl

Yesterday a very unfortunate thing happened.  One of the new pups was run over by one of our cars, fracturing his scapula (shoulder blade) and breaking the tip off of it and also some hip displacement.  The vets office was SO very sweet to us and especially Copernicus and they were very comforting and careful. However, because of his injuries he has to be restrained from walking a lot and certainly any horseplay. So yesterday after we got home from the vet I kept him inside in a really big Rubber-type Brand Name tub in the house, lined with paper and with a blanket, food and water.  He was medicated and so he rested quite a bit but later began to whine and I couldn't comfort him too well. So we brought Zeta inside and put her in there with him.

They both slept for a long time, Zeta laying her head or her paw over him as if to hold him or protect him.

I paid close attention to when they woke and seemed to need to go out and potty. And while they were outside I would change out the newspaper because when they drank they sloshed it everywhere. 

The confinement drove them batty. Great Pyrenees are roamers by nature, so eventually The Dude carried him out and put him in his doggie house so he could snuggle with his sister.  She was NOT staying in that little (to them!) tub all night! And then The Dude brought him back in this morning to get back into the blue tub.  He was definitely not having it and neither was Zeta and everybody was whining and I was going nuts, so after talking with both moms we had the idea to use the chicken wire we have here and some bannister rails and make a small pen using the dog house as a corner.  This would keep him confined enough where he couldn't walk around TOO much, couldn't go down to the creek and drink and then not be able to make the climb back up (this happened yesterday) couldn't get out around other dogs that would try and play rough with him and jump on him, yet he could go out of his house and potty and sit in the sun if he wanted to. The importance of the confinement is that according to the vet this is a critical growth time for them and growth plates are shifting about in their bodies and if that fracture doesn't heal right or he further injures himself it could cause permanent damage and possibly even cause some physical limitations.  Great Pyrenees are more susceptible to hip dysplasia anyway and so his hips need time to rest too.

Here is a picture of the make-shift pen I made today.  I know the short post is leaning but by that time I had to call it quits with the sledgehammer.

So, the vet says he should be perfectly fine so we're doing every little thing they said to do for him.  He has pain meds (once daily) and an antibiotic (2x per day) that we have to give him and we have to make sure he's eating and using the potty each day too. 

In other animal related news Sambo said he found Zeta in the neighbors yard up the street a little ways, so I am ordering their doggie tags today or tomorrow hopefully.

Christmas is coming up very soon!  We each got a card in the mail from grandma and grandpa with a gift card inside! (shhhh, don't tell her I opened them... but I did.) So after my morning initiation into farm girl life (building a animal pen all by myself!) I told The Dude that we all needed some "muck boots" soonly!  And since we're going to grandma and grandpa's farm on Christmas Eve I thought it'd be good to have them before we went.  Well, then I remembered the gift cards we all got.  Each one could use their card to buy their own pair... and everyone wants some!  (for those of you who don't get my terminology, I am referring to the rain boots like at GetItAllMart and Tarjay. I just happen to call them muck boots because I will be walking through muck, not rain... well, not all the time.) So I am going to look online today and get us all our own pair.  Then when we go to their farm on Christmas Eve they can see what their gift got them!  Don't you think they'd like to see?  Of course, my girls will probably want the Hello White Cat from Japan or whereever... boys=camo... me?  Who knows...I'm not exactly the "pink" type of gal... not sure I'd want anything with any kind of fancy design or colors on them either but I guess I will have to choose from what they have before I can really say either way.

Well, I'm off to check on puppies and kids and then do some more typical mommy-type stuffs.