If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t have had run Ricky in the park last Saturday. But I had a wedding that night and was shooting the next day, and needed him to be worn out.
Cut to last Tuesday, right before I went to urgent care. I picked Ricky up from the vet. He’d been hobbling around on three legs for three days. The vet did an MRI, and the result was in: a torn CCL – the canine equivalent of an ACL.
This Monday, Ricky is going to have surgery, and the ruptured ligament will be removed and the bones in his leg screwed together with a metal plate. Then a ten-week recuperation begins, to which Jeff, Ricky’s cool, hippy dog walker said was going to be “one bummer of a summer.”
Also terrific: the price of the operation. $3500.
The upside is he’ll be a brand new dog when it’s all over. And I’m totally going to see if his new, metal knee will hold fridge magnets. Until then, it’s like a Civil War triage station in this place. The unwalking dead.
