Well, I Never Thought of That...

Editor's Note: After discussing this with Cowboy H, I learned that Olivia has a pellet in her head, not a bee bee. A bee bee would not have mushroomed the way the pellet did. The fact that a pellet gun was used is even more upsetting because they can do much more damage than a bee bee gun.

If something, like a bee bee, is embedded into a bone, then it wouldn't move around. Which is exactly why the bump on top of Olivia's head wouldn't move. It is stuck in her skull. And its staying there.




Do you see it? Its a little hard to miss. One of the girls at my work could see it from across the room. My poor baby. She got pretty lucky though, apparently it didn't go all the way through her skull, and so far she's still normal (for her that is.)

Now, to find out who's shooting bee bee guns in a cul-de-sac neighborhood...

Maybe I'll have to stick Cowboy H on them.

He can do a little detective work.

Broken Puppy

When we met Hank, before bringing him to the Homestead, we knew he was broken. His previous owners had ran him over (in their garage!) and then turned him over to the Pet Emergency Clinic when they decided they didn't want him anymore, his being broken and all. The above x-ray was taken the day after he came into the clinic and shows a minor fracture where the femur and femoral head meet. (Eventually these two fuse together, there is a growth plate there at this point in this puppy's life.)

Hmmm... not so bad, we thought. He's got a lot of growing to do and his grown-up bones will be twice as big as his puppy bones. Calcification will develop and engulf the fracture. So, we took him home, excited to be adding a canine to the (overwhelming) feline population at the Homestead.

A week later, we took Hank back to the emergency clinic just as a precaution, to make sure the leg was beginning to heal and everything was moving in the right direction. Well, after a bit of attitude adjustment (on Hank's behalf), Cowboy H and I had taken the desired pictures. I looked at the screen... and my heart sank.

Now, it was obvious that the femoral head had completely separated from the femur. It was not what we expected at all. On top of that, there were these strange bone-like pieces "floating" next to the femur. Bone shards? Pieces splintered off the femur? Our hearts were heavy when we left the clinic that night.

Fortunately, I work for a vet who does orthopedic surgery, and commonly does a procedure called an FHO (Femoral Head Osteotomy). An FHO involves actually removing the femoral head and has proven successful in dogs with severe hip displasia. Wait, hey, didn't Hank's femoral head remove itself?? All it was doing was taking up space in the hip socket (and cutting off the blood supply to his precious growth plate!).

So, three days later, Cowboy H had a consulation scheduled with Dr. Clark and Hank's x-rays. After much talk about growth plates, arthritis, surgery, and roping steers, Hank had an FHO scheduled for 2 days later!