ugh, seriously.

Sorry, this is going to be a whiny post,warning now.

As if I didn't have enough to deal with, chasing Luke down all day and not sleeping all that great at night, going to school and trying to pass, trying to plan Luke's party, helping with the Promise Walk, and some other stuff that is pretty time consuming that I'm not quite ready to announce yet...

While I was feeding Luke lunch today the dogs were outside playing. Rogue was barking like crazy so I went to see what was up (some people walking behind the fence with their dog...we have a walking path behind our house and common area...which btw, I hate for this reason and also because our fence has been vandalized and annoying teenagers like to go in the woods behind our house and smoke pot and that annoys me too.) I tried to make her come in but she ignored me and Luke was in the middle of eating so I let it go hoping that the barking dog would get the people to move along. Well, when I let Rogue in after Luke was done eating a few minutes later, she was limping badly. I was hoping she had just tweaked something, rubbed her leg, and went on to see what happened. She kept limping, badly, all afternoon, outside, inside, even tried chasing a fly on 3 legs.

We adopted Rogue from the Kansas Humane Society when she was 8 weeks old. She had already been spayed, which has probably screwed her up big time as far as bone and joint development. (FYI, do not let them spay your dog as a 6 week old! She had already been spayed by the time we met her. We are also pretty sure this contributed to her skittishness.) By the time she was 1, she had a luxating patella, meaning her knee cap did not stay in place. It would come out of place, she would limp for a bit, then it would either slide back into place on it's own or Joe was good at putting it back in place at least for awhile. She ended up needing knee surgery at a special orthopedic vet. It was expensive and a pain in the butt and she HATES vets. A miserable, crappy, 8 weeks for us both. Those were the good days though before I knew that babies die, or even *wanted* to get pregnant, when I was working on my bachelor's degree and had nothing to really worry about except taking care of Rogue- we didn't even have our other dog yet- how easy that was in hindsight!

The orthopedic vet told me that she wouldn't be surprised if she needed the other knee done eventually too because her joint just had not developed well. They usually only have to do one or two things to correct a luxating patella, with her, they had to do everything (deepen the groove where the knee rests, screw it in to the tibia, and tighten the ligaments.)

So fast forward to today, limping dog, her "good" non-surgically repaired knee. Her knee felt normal enough to me but I never really could tell when it was out of place or not before. So I kept an eye on her, sent an email to Joe, and hoped it got better. When Joe got home, he looked at it, thought her knee was still in place, no idea what was wrong, onto the vet we go. A stressed out Rogue and x-ray later, it is likely that Rogue tore her CCL...the dog version of the ACL. We are taking the least invasive approach for now, which the vet preferred at this point, rest and medication. So now I get to sneak Rogue meds two times a day (which is not easy, she figures it out and spits it out), plus have to take her on potty breaks on a leash outside (which is going to be fantastically fun with an 11 month in one arm and a gimpy dog on a leash in the other plus a dumb husky who doesn't understand why Rogue is on a leash and is staying right on top of Rogue lest we suddenly take her on a walk and forget him.) And when she is not going to the bathroom outside, she's supposed to be resting inside (not chasing flies on 3 legs.) I think I'm going to just keep her in our room with the door shut. She does have a crate in there that hopefully she will mostly just stay in, but I don't want to force her to stay in it.

Anyway, this sucks. We were thinking and starting to tentatively plan a quick long weekend Chicago roadtrip, take Luke to see the dolphins and stuff at the Shedd aquarium, etc. and now it looks like most likely we will be shelling out the money for dog surgery instead, again.

And now I am off to bed with my fingers crossed that my darling child will sleep at least for a couple hours. I have a quiz tomorrow that I have studied for barely at all (over all of the muscles of the human body), lucky for me, it's multiple choice, my grade is almost 100% for the semester, and we get to drop our lowest quiz grade...I'm thinking this will most likely be my dropped quiz grade based on the lack of studying. At this point, sleep wins over studying.