Pacific Northwest Gardening: Who are your garden helpers?, 1 by katie59

katie59 wrote:
Thanks, James. It was VERY traumatic - and I had just lost my job, my car had just blown a head gasket, my mother was convalescing from a serious illness, I had just gotten the puppy Sahara, and I still had many (10?) of the unadopted kittens from a colony of cats I had been trapping, spaying and releasing. It was a rough time and it was just me; good thing I was so busy. But that was 2006, so Vahna is old and gray (and still here) now.

I know it could have been much worse, though. After they'd stabilized her with meds and watched her for a week, they then went in to repair her pelvis. The hip joint couldn't hold the femur anymore, so they did a femoral head osteotomy to save her leg. It's a crazy concept. They just cut off the top of the bone and her soft tissues serves as a joint. She almost always uses the leg now and you wouldn't know the difference.

The good thing is that she doesn't try to get out of the fence at all now. The bad thing is that she didn't learn about cars. About a year ago the neighbor accidentally let her out of the yard and she promptly ran 1/4 mile up to the road and right across in front of a car. Some dogs won't ever get it.

People still race down that road (which has a 25 mph speed limit) without even thinking about the loose dogs, deer, etc. on it. And the person who hit Vahna didn't even stop, which still aggravates me. If they had, they could at least have checked her tags and called me. It's probably good that I'll never find out who it was.

The people at Access were awesome. And when we were leaving, a couple who had been visiting their elderly dog stopped me and said good bye to Vahna. It turns out that Vahna's cage was right by their dog's and they would comfort her as well as their pup when they were visiting. Good people.

Sorry for going on. I think this is the first chance I've actually had to emote about this.