It appears that being headline news in our last newsletter went to Houdi’s head as he decided to make sure he featured in this issue as well. The day after the last letter went out I went to take Houdi for his morning walk and to my horror discovered that overnight he had attacked his bandage. Now up to this point he had never touched it but on this occasion he had bitten right through down to the skin over the operation site and made a large hole in the dressing and had also removed a few of the stitches. The leg was angry and swollen so I immediately phoned the vets but they had already started the days operations so I made an emergency appointment for early afternoon. I got Houdi out and had another look at his leg, it was swelling quite badly in the hole so we felt the only option was to remove the whole dressing to relieve the pressure. Dave and I spent the next two and a half hours taking it in turns to stay with Houdi to make sure he didn’t do any more damage to the leg, whilst we tried to complete the rest of the routine kennel duties. I was outside the vets well before my appointment time but they took me straight in.

The vet examined Houdi’s leg and was not happy. She felt that there must have been a reason for him to attack the dressing and she was concerned that there was infection in the bone at the fracture site and she felt that immediate x-rays were needed to see what was going on. Our branch vet does not have x-ray facilities so I put Houdi in the car for the 20 minute drive to the March surgery. There Houdi was x-rayed. He was his usual perfectly behaved self, no sedation needed although they did get me to stand with him to keep him still. The x-rays were developed and were seen by the duty vet. He was very concerned as he felt that the break was not healing, he was talking about specialists and amputation. I was devastated and asked to see the vet who did the surgery immediately. They phoned through to his branch and he agreed to see me as soon as I could get over there so I popped Houdi back in the car, picked up the x-rays and drove straight over. I was in tears most of the way but was trying to keep calm.

Once at Wisbech I was taken through to see the vet as soon as he had looked at the x-rays. He immediately put my mind at rest as he was, in fact, pleased with the leg’s progress. He felt that the problem had been caused by an infection starting in the bone and prescribed long-term antibiotic treatment and x-rays in January to check progress and decide when the plate could be removed.

Hopefully by the time of the next news letter we will have news on the next stage of his treatment but in the meantime the bills have started to arrive which has forced us to put out an appeal . Houdi remains oblivious to all the fuss and the only thing he wants to know is……………………"when can I get off this stupid lead and go for a run??"

Below are some pictures that were taken by the vet when he was taken in by a member of the public - they are not very pretty but it does help to understand just how far this lad has come since the early days.