Limping Lexi

Usually she is leaping Lexi but on Monday she became limping Lexi. After some squirrel chasing, she developed a limp. She walked around on 3 legs, giving her back right leg a break. We called the vet and they suggested just keeping an eye on her for the remainder of the night to see if it appeared to improve.

It did not.

Tuesday morning I took our sweet little girl to the vet and thankfully someone was able to see us within 30 minutes. Dr. Mendoza, our wonderful wonderful vet, examined Lexi and determined it was her knee. Without an x-ray though we wouldn't know if it was just an irritated muscle or if she tore her puppy ACL or meniscus. Dr. Mendoza prescribed some pain killers, 5-6 days of lots of rest and no horse-playing, jumping or fun adventures. If it healed itself, great. If not, schedule x-ray for Monday and cross our fingers she doesn't need surgery.

Besides the obvious challenge of keeping our very bouncy puppy-baby from being so bouncy, I quickly realized another challenge: getting her home. Ross was at work and Lexi needed to not jump into or out of the car and prego me cannot lift her. The vet's office could lift her into the car but they how would I get her out when we got home? And I needed to go to work so how could I keep her from running around the house and jumping on furniture all day? Add into that pregnancy hormones and the pre-8 a.m. hour and I was overwhelmed pretty damn fast.

Lexi ended up spending the day at the vet's office where they could kennel her and Stacy and Megan met me up there after work so Stacy could take on the Lexi lifting duties. Even just after one day of resting, she was already looking better.

"At least I got a new bed out of the deal."

Since then Ross and I have been vigilant about monitoring her. No puppy door, no walks, no runs, no jumping on the furniture. We even take her into the front yard to go potty because there are steps off our back porch and bought her a new puppy bed so she would have something soft to sit/lay on during her furniture barring.

She's not been terribly enthusiastic about her imposed near-bed-rest and she seems really confused about the sudden lack of walks but it does seem to be working. This afternoon she looks like she's at 90%, maybe even better. Knock on wood, but we may have dodged the puppy surgery bullet.