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Earlier this week Duncan accidentally stepped on Emmett,
who's been enjoying the warm weather by sprawling in the sun
in front of the porch steps, forcing the other dogs to
figure out how to get around him. Emmett bit Duncan in the
face for his transgression. Duncan is extremely touchy
about being handled and wouldn't let me near his face, but
it didn't look terrible. Yesterday morning it was obviously
infected so we went to see the vet.

Duncan gets hysterical at the vet and we had to sedate him
to be able to get at the wound. He dropped like a rock -
the dog was out cold, which wasn't the original plan. After
cleaning up the infection (which was pretty bad) we decided
to use the opportunity to do all those things to Duncan that
hadn't been possible when he was awake, most importantly to
try to figure out why he's been lame.

The vet thought he looked a little dysplastic when he walked
so it was a big relief when his hips turned out to be in
great shape. We did a set of back x-rays, which showed some
bridging between the vertebrae. The pictures led the vet to
think that Duncan is actually about 11 or 12 years old, or
maybe even more. I'd thought he was 7. It's likely that
the person who surrendered him to the animal shelter fibbed
about his age in hopes that he'd be easier to get adopted.
At any rate, the pictures have been sent up to the
radiologist at Cornell and I'll be finding out more on
Tuesday. (BTW, hooray for vets who develop the x-rays while
you wait and will walk you through them in detail.)

This is quite a shock. He doesn't look at all like an
elderly dog and he's still a typical active, curious
Siberian Husky, but it does explain some behavioral and
health things that have been going on for the last year or
so. But, you know, holy cow.
--
Melinda Shore - Software longa, hardware brevis -

The Bush administration is spending more on TV ads about Medicare than
it would cost to create a safe system for importing prescripion medicines.