So when I was adorable and young and thought I could fly, I jumped off a sofa. And broke my elbow.
And no… I haven’t learnt my lesson. Jumping off sofas is still a fun activity of mine.
I had what’s called a humeral condylar fracture of my right front leg.
Unfortunately its not an easy fracture to repair. Mother says its because the humeral condyle fracture is a fracture that affects the bone within the joint space itself, which makes it rather complicated. No one at Mothers vets has ever performed this procedure. Mother does some simple orthopaedic operations, so she emailed my x-rays over to a local referral clinic to see if they could give some advice on whether it would be doable for her to try to fix me herself.
Because I came to Mother with the fracture, no insurance would touch my leg, and Mother wasn’t planning to get a dog so suddenly, so while she had savings, she didn’t have thousands of pounds to pay for a dog that wasn’t even definitely hers yet (she had to get the okay from the boss to be able to bring me to work and that took a week to get). If she wasn’t going to be able to fix my leg, the alternative would be to amputate the leg. I would have been a tripod dog! Mother said she does amputations all the time, and that dogs do really well with three legs. They do especially well when it happens at a young age since we can adapt so much better. I know this is true because while my leg was broken I was still running around on three legs all about the back garden, like nothing was wrong with me. Remember, I was such a brave boy.
However, if they did have to amputate, it is likely that when I reached middle age I would have some arthritic changes, which would potentially cause discomfort when I’m older. Arthritis is common in older dogs, but with an amputee it is almost guaranteed, as we have to put our weight abnormally through the other legs, leading to more wear and tear on them.
The local referral clinic were amazing! The responded super quickly saying that since the pup was a sign over, currently without a definite home, they’d do the repair at a discounted rate. Mother agreed straight away, agreeing to pay for it herself, even without knowing if she would be able to keep me.
She told me if the boss wouldn’t allow me to come to work, then it wouldn’t be fair to keep me as she works long hours and I couldn’t be left unattended at home that long ethically. It wouldn’t have been fair to me. But it’s ok cause the boss said yes, and now I come to work with Mother every day.
Anyway, I presented to Mothers work on a Friday. I stayed with her for two days, met the cats, and caused plenty of havoc. Then Monday morning the referral replied, and by Monday lunch time, I was being driven over to the referrals in Mothers lunch hour to get my operation. I stayed with the referral for just over 24hours. They called Mother saying they’d be able to do my operation Tuesday morning after all my preliminary x-rays were completed Monday. Tuesday lunch time I was done, high as a kite on the magic opioids again and ready to go home.
Mother fetched me after work. I had a bald right front leg from where they’d shaved it for the operation site, and a bald patch on the left front leg where I’d had an IV cannular placed for my drugs to go in. I was a good boy the entire time. I came home with a buster collar on to stop me getting to my sutures. And I had to go in the foot well of Mothers car in a cat carrier to stop me crawling all over the place with a freshly fixed bone. I have metal plates and pins in my leg now.
My recovery was troublesome for Mother but not so much for me. I felt fabulous and was walking on all four legs within a day of the surgery. Mother then had to make sure I didn’t do further damage and ruin the repair. Mother made a temporary pen with the furniture and a yoga mat to prevent me having full reign of the room. And I was in my crate whenever Mother wasn’t around directly. I didn’t like going in the crate, still don’t really, but I’m well behaved in there. Mother says it’s because I had to go in with the broken leg recovery, where as ideally I should have been learning the crate is a positive thing and want to go in willingly. I don’t. Sometimes she hides food and toys in there to make me go in, and I’ll fetch them, but I’ll bring them right back out.
Those first few weeks after surgery I was flying. Mother tried so hard to keep me rested, but I hadn’t had any vaccines, so I hadn’t even had a walk anywhere but the back garden my entire life. And now I had all four working legs I wanted to go! Mother had me wearing a baby t-shirt that one of the nurses from work gave me to stop me from getting to my wound. She would then carry me places. So mother would go for a walk, to the local Londis shop, or to the local park, carrying me the whole time. I loved it. I would sniff the bushes, and look around at all the people, and listen to all the noises. But she wouldn’t let me on the floor; my leg was still healing and I still hadn’t had my vaccines.
Once Mother was happy my leg was healing with no complications I was able to be vaccinated thankfully. One step closer to those elusive walks I’d heard so much about. In the mean time, I’d found another outlet. Humping.
Humping is great. People think its a hormone thing. At this stage I was too young to even know what that meant. All I knew, was that I had all this energy, and no way of letting it out. Mother had tried mental food games with me, but she says I’m stupid-smart, so even though as a spaniel I should be very intelligent, I really couldn’t figure out the food games at all. I still can’t. Snuffle mats are about as complicated as I can manage. Anyway, no walks, and no food games to distract me successfully. Sniff work hadn’t occurred to Mother yet. So I discovered humping. Mother had this lovely round ball like blue owl soft toy. She says Auntie Natalie (Mothers sister) won it for her at an amusement park, which apparently means it had enough sentimental value for Mother to remember that random event from years ago. Perfect. So I got that between my two front legs (recently fixed) and stood on my back legs over it. Mother did not have time to react and before she knew it I was humping. I was going full steam ahead. This was amazing! I had so much energy and BOOM! suddenly I just knew how to get rid of it.
I humped a lot over those first few months. I had to wean my exercise up because of my leg, so when I first started doing walks it would only be 10mins at a time maximum for a few days, before upping it slowly and steadily. I humped the owl, I humped (and still occasionally hump) a genie cushion, a cat bed, a duvet and a rug. I wasn’t too fussy, but the owl and the genie were my favourites. Now I think about it, I haven’t seen the owl in a long time.
Mother says humping in my instance isn’t sexual (ewww), it’s just when I get into a heightened state of arousal, be that from excitement or general under stimulation, my body wants to let that energy out in a safe way. I only really hump these days when I’ve not had a good enough walk for a couple days, usually when Mother is under the weather and doesn’t feel up for our normal outings. It took several months of weaning my exercise up for Mother to learn that I need on average 60-90 minutes of exercise (with at least some of it being off the lead- which came much later in the training) for me to not hump my owl.
Recovery from the surgery I had takes on average about six weeks. I was back to normal at four weeks. I was very lucky. Mother had a puppy at work - full cocker spaniel- that did the same fracture injury about 2 weeks after me, went to the same referrals and everything. The puppy didn’t rest properly and managed to damage the metalwork and had to have further surgery to remove some of the pins a couple weeks later, and took over 8 weeks to fully heal in the end. So I was definitely one lucky boy.
Mother said she was always a bit worried I’d do the same thing to the other leg, apparently its a congenital spaniel thing and can happen bilaterally (both sides). But she didn’t want me to live a restricted miserable life. So when I was given the okay for my leg, I started to do all the exercise. And I was back to jumping off and on sofas in no time. Thankfully, my other leg has been fine, and it’s a type of injury that only really
happens when growing so I’m out of the woods now!
See below for pics of how cute I was and my favourite humping toy ‘Owlie’. I’m off to see if I can find him now, I’m a bit worried Mother may have thrown him out without me realising.