Well... we've been a little quiet of late! No adventurous tales for a few weeks. Drifty boy is laid up with a broken metacarpal in his paw. A delicate little bone that can't really be plastered... its just a case of house rest and trying to restrict his movements as much as possible... which is extremely hard for an energetic Border Collie that normally lives life full speed ahead!
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| The Offending Paw! |
He's actually done really well, the poor wee soul, i thought he'd have major cabin fever and be going round the twist but he's been really chilled out about it. It happened 3 weeks ago now, not entirely sure how? Its been really wet and muddy and Drift is always running around full pelt chasing Finn and balls and sticks. I think he slid and twisted as he's been catching a ball and maybe initially just had a hair-line fracture. He had a day of limping then seemed fine.. looking like it was just a little muscle pull... then a few days later it was much much worse again. He was limping badly and infact not using his foot, avoiding putting any weight on it at all. His foot was really quite swollen so hard to feel anything. Sitting infront of me, looking very sorry for himself, he insisted on constantly proffering me his sore paw! Expecting me to be able to fix it... i felt pretty useless apart from being able to give out as many snuggles as possible to reassure him. The Vet concurred my initial suspicion and committed him to total rest apart from going out for quick 'business' breaks!
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| Taking it easy & putting his paws up! |
Little Finn has been a curious little guy without his side-kick! Out on walks he seems a lot less confident, looking to me for reassurance rather than following in the footsteps of his brother without a worry. He looks at every other dog excitedly hoping for a play-mate to run around and play chase with. We've been doing a lot of running together, 3 miles every other evening so he's been enjoying that and its giving him a focus on something other than the absence of his best buddy. Its been really enjoyable & beneficial for both of us and become something that we do together, so when Drift isn't there, Finn expects this routine. I can also say its been doing a good job of getting rid of excess energy & tiring him out...
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| Lazy bones Finn putting his paws up too! |
So 3 weeks on and we are doing really well... Drift is walking around fine now, putting full weight on his foot but not wanting to cause any problems further down the line, it'll be another couple of weeks before he's back running around like normal. We've been on a couple of short on lead walks with a few days of rest in between, gradually building up exercise slowly again. Drifty is by no means an old dog, at just 5 there's more than just little bit of life left in him yet. But i'm very conscious... maybe overly so... that injuries and ailments that are not given a chance to heal properly are going to cause worse problems further down the line. So hard as it may be to keep Drift to minimal exercise it will serve his body well in the long term.
