A bit of a hiccup

It's been a stressful week with a couple of trips to the vet for Boris, somehow he injured his hip which resulted in him being so much stiffer and lamer than usual, he was given the tried and tested opioid fuelled molotov cocktail of painkillers which soon had him feeling a lot more comfortable, on his return today he was feeling much better and the vet was able too move his hip without resistance

 

Photo Description - A head shot of Boris the Black Cocker Spaniel in the car looking at the camera with a slightly sad look on his face as he's in pain and we're just about to set off to the vets to check it out

I've accepted that Boris will probably never be fully sound again since his elbow fracture, the strain of that and the subsequent surgery put a massive strain on all of his other joints and he's lost so much of the muscle condition we had built up to support his joints and keep him fit and well

Unfortunately every major joint is full of chronic arthritis and at 9 years old Boris is not an old dog, he's in the prime of his life and building his fitness back up to what it was before he fractured his elbow 4 months ago will be a long slow process, but we will get there and hopefully without too many hiccups like this week

Managing Boris's pain and keeping him happy and comfortable is always my main priority, thankfully he's not put on any extra weight whilst he's been on restricted exercise as his daily calorie intake has been reduced in accordance with his lack of exercise, much to his disgust lol

The best way to help protect a dogs joints long term is to not let them get fat in the first place, the boys get weighed every month to ensure their weight stays stable and adjustments to their diet are made if they put on more than half a kilo

If only I was so strict with my own weight lol

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Eko is now fully healed after his recent argument with a barbed wire fence which required stitches

Photo Description - A close up head shot of Eko the Golden Cocker Spaniel as he looks up towards me, his ears are slightly damp and tousled looking as it had been raining earlier, the fine blonde hair on top of his head, which is the start of a top knot growing, is sticking up in a comical way because it was also a breezy day, which gives him an overall cute and scruffy look

Unfortunately at around 8 days in a few of the stitches popped due to some swelling and a mild infection, so a trip to the vet was necessary to check it out

As Eko had just finished his antibiotic course that morning it was felt best not to over prescribe and give him more antibiotics, although a time sensitive prescription was added to our account in case there was no improvement in the next 48 hours, then we would be able to collect them without needing to see the vet again

Thankfully we didn't need them 

Although Eko was not a happy bear on the day we went for his stitches out, he'd been promised a free run and no more surgical suit, this sadly didn't happen as there was still some swelling and the hole where he'd popped the stitches still

wasn't fully healed and had some leakage going on, so the vet thought it prudent to only remove every other stitch rather than all of them at once 

 

So there was no free run that afternoon and Eko still needed to wear the surgical suit to stop him from scratching at his stitches. It's the first time we've ever used one of these surgical suits and I have to say I'm very impressed at how effective it's been at keeping Eko's mucky claws out of his wound

Although it was a bit of a pain having to take the suit off off every time Eko needed to go potty (unfortunately a certain part of his anatomy doesn't quite line up with the opening designed for boys) but was a small inconvenience to ensure that his wound stayed as clean and dry as possible

Eko has now had all of his stitches removed and is back on normal exercise once more, let's hope he doesn't come across another barbed wire fence any time soon

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In other news we were recently without water for four days when something went wrong at the local water treatment plant, we'd had a lot of flooding in the area so I'm guessing the water got contaminated somehow

You just don't realise how much you rely on running water until it's taken away from you, we had to queue for several hours to collect bottled water at temporary water stations that Thames Water had set up, so many times in those four days I went to wash my hands turned on the tap and nothing

 Luckily for us we have a water butt to collect rain water for watering the garden, so at least we were able to use buckets of water from the water butt to flush the toilet

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Dad is absolutely loving it at the Day Centre and it's made so much difference to his whole demeanor, all that worry about how dad would feel about it - turns out it was more about me over thinking about the person dad used to be and not about the person he is now

Dad has now made several friends there and looks forward to going every week, I've even joined the support group they run for carers which I'm finding most helpful, apparently I can claim for a reduction in my parents Council Tax due to dads Alzheimer's and dad might even qualify to have his place at the day centre subsidised rather than me paying privately for it, which would be fantastic if that's the case, but I won't bank on it so that I'm not disappointed 

Dawn, Boris & Eko xxx

If you love online Jigsaw Puzzles check out our latest puzzle(s) of this weeks photo(s) 

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Brian's Thankful Thursday