Well, his leg, anyway. Whilst trying to look after all three kids on Wednesday after work in the back garden, Jackson got in the way when I tried kicking a toy in Mishka's direction. In my defense, I had one hand on Lara, trying to keep her upright on our lethally-steep garden, Mishka was barking madly, and Jackson was, well, being Jackson. This meant running around like his tail was on fire (it wasn't), and trying to be a part of everything. Anyway, his timing was impeccable, and he got between my foot and the toy I was about to roll in Mishka's direction. The toy didn't move but poor Jacko went rolling two or three metres down the garden. I could tell from his yelps that he'd been hurt, although after the first 5 or 6 seconds he just sat there, tail still wagging, panting a lot, but no longer crying.
I picked Lara up, which set her off screaming as she likes to walk down the garden, holding my hand, and dashed into the house. This gave Olga a mild heart attack, thinking there was something wrong with Lara, but once she got over that, she took over nursing the poor lad. A quick call to our vets got us an appointment in 20 minutes time. Jackson by this time seemed calm, there wasn't any crying, and he was wagging his tail and happy to lick our hands and faces just like he normally does. This was reassuring, as if there was a big problem with his leg, I doubt he'd be behaving like that. As the damage had been caused by rolling down the garden, rather than being kicked by me (it wasn't a kick, he'd simply sat on my foot at the very second I tried to roll the toy down the garden) I thought it might have been a dislocated hip, which had popped out then back in again.
Anyway, we all went off to the vets, Jackson was giving a pain-killing injection, the vet wasn't desperately concerned, and wanted Jackson to have 24 hours of rest in his pen, and let's see how he was the next day.
He still wasn't putting any weight on it yesterday, so there was clearly something more wrong that just bruising or muscle trouble, and we took him back to the vets yesterday after work. The senior vet had a look at him and felt there was something wrong with his leg just around his ankle joint, and that he should have an xray. Here's the poor man last night, we had him couped up so he wasn't tempted to go and play with Mishka, but also so he was close to us:
Then this morning he was positively running around in his outside pen:
So, Jackson had some more painkillers last night, and went in for his xray this morning. We had a call less than an hour later to say that he had a non-displaced fracture of his tibia just above his ankle joint. The fact that it's not displaced is a relief, and it means he'll just be bandaged up for three weeks.
You couldn't believe how bad I felt, from the second I heard him yelping, and all day yesterday. As I say in the title, I'd be a rubbish sadist, I couldn't imagine getting pleasure from inflicting pain on someone, even a dog! I feel better now, knowing that he'll be fine, and that right now he's probably being fussed over by all the staff at the vet's practise.
Two positives have come out of it - we got him insured just in the nick of time a week ago, and the insurance will cover the costs minus the excess, and we got Lara weighed on the scales that the vets use for weighing the animals! 11.75kg.....
I'll post regular updates on his progress. The way he's been wagging his tail, he'll be back in there soon for a tail-replacement.
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