[Lou]

Gracie, our little rescue had emergency surgery on her leg Saturday.

Gracie had three pins in her hind leg from a surgery. One of them had come through the bone and was digging into the muscle of her leg. The leg was swollen and already infected. The vet told us we needed to get it out immediately so in to surgery she went. As it turned out, all three pins had to be removed. There were pockets of pus around each one of the. The one that was causing the problem was totally loose and the other two, according to the vet, were heading the same way. We picked Gracie up yesterday and she is fine. She was putting weight on the leg already but still holding up when she ran. She had been doing that every since her knee surgery though which is why we didn’t see that she was lame right away.
As long as the antibiotics work and the infection goes away she will be in good shape. I wish you could have seen her greeting the other dogs. If I ever had a doubt about her thinking we were her family it went away. That little tail was wagging so hard and fast it brought tears to my eyes.
That’s all I’ll write about the surgery but if you want to know Gracie’s story her is some of it.

Gracie’s Story:
We got Gracie last year from the breeder we bought Skeeter and Adie. Gracie is their mother. Anyway, the breeder told us that she came home one day shortly after she got Gracie and found her carrying her left hind leg. A trip to the vet followed by X-rays showed a nearly shattered knee. Breeder doesn’t know how it happened. (Hmmm)

Gracie was sent to an orthopedic surgeon who didn’t think he could save her leg because the break was so bad and she was so tiny. He did manage to save it repair it with three pins.

Gracie went on to accidentally mate and have Adie and a sister that didn’t live when Gracie was only 11 months old.

There was another litter that did not survive the following year and then Gracie had Skeeter who was a singleton.

I think there may have been a litter after that but by then the breeder was tired of me questioning her judgment and wouldn’t tell me.

The breeder finally decided that Gracie wasn’t a good producer and she wanted to reduce her number of breeders and gradually get out of the business so she offered to give Gracie to me.

At that time we had the gentle giant (Ivan) – a total of four dogs and dh would have killed me if I took her. Of course not taking her was going to kill me too so it hurt.

When we had to put Ivan down by coincidence the breeder was at the vets with a puppy she was selling so she was aware of the situation. Two weeks later she again offered me Ivan. When I told dh about it he simply asked when we could get her.

Gracie entered the house, hopped up on dh’s lap and became HIS dog from the get go. (Smart dog.)

Gracie came with issues that I wrote about but this is about her leg so I won’t go in to it here.