Looking Forward

We all had a quiet Christmas which was good for Leo's knee. Now the girlies (Buffie and Fifi) are in season. This means I have to have eyes in the back of my head, as not only do I not want them to get together just yet, I also don't want Leo to put his knee under any extra pressure. I've written to the Kennel Club asking for permission to show Leo now that he has had this operation and I expect they will get in touch with Mike Shaw our vet.

We don't have a show until the end of January but I don't expect we will have heard by then so Leo won't be in the ring. In any case he still has a very light-coloured rear leg as the hair is still very short and pale where it was totally shaved for the op.

Maybe, at Fifi's next season in mid summer I will let them mate and we will have our first litter of puppies. I am so excited about this, I just hope it goes well.

Leo the patient

Leo is laying across my lap with a blanket over him. We picked him up from the vet this morning, yesterday he was admitted for an emergency cruciate ligament repair.

To those who don't know what a cruciate ligament is it's the stringy thing that holds one bone to another under your knee-cap (patella) and allows your knee to bend up and down but not side to side. Leo's had broken and needed a quick repair so that he could be free from pain and able to walk on four legs.

The vet told me after the op that he had inserted a new ligament made of plastic with metal clips to the bones, and had tidied up the cartiledge in his knee. Leo was kept overnight as he needed morphine to cope with the pain.

He is to have absolutely strict rest for 4-6 weeks and then very limited movement for another 4-6 weeks, with physio-therapy to keep his knee from stiffening up.

Whether we will ever be able to show him again remains to be seen. We will have to ask the Kennel Club for permission to show him as you do after such an operation.

But that doesn't matter, I am just glad he's OK now