Category: Adventures in Rufus and/or Otis

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What It Is: 5/25/09

What I’m reading: Plutarch’s Lives of Pericles and Fabius. I had a devil of a time getting into the Pericles section. It’s possible I was more distracted than usual, but the prose seemed utterly unwieldy and drowsiness-inducing. Which bums me out, because I expected that sketch to be one of the greats. Still, he kept me going with the life of Fabius Maximus and the comparison of the two.

What I’m listening to: Good News for People Who Like Bad News, by Modest Mouse.

What I’m watching: Burn After Reading, Doc Hollywood, Helvetica, and Local Hero (which really should get remastered/reissued on DVD). We moved my 24″ iMac downstairs (along with our guest bed), so it’s just been selective DVD viewing down in our rec room / library.

What I’m drinking: River Horse lager, picked up on a whim at Whole Foods.

What Rufus is up to: Recovering from surgery to repair the damage inflicted by a neighbor’s Akita, which took 2 chunks out of Ru’s right rear leg. He’s spending most of his days & nights in his crate. It’s a good thing he spent the first 2 years or so of his life crated, otherwise he might really object to being there. As is, he gets antsy if he doesn’t have access to it (when we get back inside after a bathroom break and I have to change the dressing over his wounds).

Where I’m going: Nowhere. I had to cancel my participation in an overnight PR junket in NYC this week, because of my poor boy’s condition.

What I’m happy about: Barring complications (read: infection), Rufus has a good chance of being “back to normal” in about 6 weeks. Oh, and my pals Ian & Jess are visiting next weekend! And the day before Rufus was attacked, I had a great visit with my grad school pals Joy & Miguel and their kids, who live about 15 minutes away from the hotel I was staying in in downtown Atlanta. Also, I’m happy that I went out with some client-pals on Wednesday to a Braves game. They knew all about my troubles/stresses with Rufus and were hoping to take my mind off things. Go look at some pictures.

What I’m sad about: All the anxiety and stress about Ru, as well as my assumption that “none of this would have happened if I’d been here.” I got over that self-centered guilt soon after getting home from BIO on Thursday night, faced with the immediacy of Ru’s situation (and not mine). And I’m sad that I missed the fancy dinner I was going to have in Atlanta, because I got the news about Rufus about 2 hours earlier. My coworkers and work-pals enjoyed themselves, so that’s good.

What I’m worried about: That the Animal Control dept. will fail to do its duty regarding the offending Akita, which attacked another dog 3 weeks earlier.

What I’m pondering: How to TASE a dog without risking “back-zap.” Just in case.

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No news

Just a quiet day of trying to keep Ru from licking his wounds, ripping his sutures, or otherwise stunting his recovery.

Here’s our boy as the Bizarro version of Ace the Bat-Hound:

And a sign that he’s feeling a little better: the new yoga position of Wounded Cockroach!

Thanks for sticking around. I hope you have a good Memorial Day. I’ll likely spend mine reading and keeping an eye on Rufus, while Amy has fun with our grill (no rain, dammit!).

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Rufus Update

Just back from the vet! At least half the staff of the office came in to see Rufus, since he’d made such an impression on everyone last week. He held up well for this exam, although they decided to pre-emptively put a stylish muzzle on him. I have a picture of this, which I’ll post soon. He looked like the Bizarro Ace the Bat-Hound.

Of Ru’s two main wounds, the front one is healing up just fine, but the rear one isn’t suturing up so well, so he may need another surgery in a few weeks. We’ll be going back Tuesday morning to have the drain (a long rubber tube) removed from his leg, and next weekend we’ll have a better idea of how that rear wound is doing.

The vet re-wrapped his leg and made the final cover out of a neon green bandage that has some bitter-taste chemical in it (to keep him from licking it). She told me that Rufus reacts kinda badly whenever he has a new wrap; the minute she was done and he was allowed to start walking, he yelped and kept twisting in circles, trying to get at the new bandage.

The thing is, he did the same thing last night when I put a wrap at the top of his bandage, to cover the part that had slipped down since Wednesday. I thought I’d wrapped him too tightly, but the vet explained that he just needs a little while to adjust.

Since this was my first time talking to the vet since Ru was brought to them on Tuesday, I asked about his long-term prospects of recovery. I had no idea how long it’ll take him to get back to his old self, as far as going on hikes, or even just walking around the block for a mile. In fact, I didn’t know if the nature of his injuries meant he would never do that stuff again. That’d be awful, since he really enjoys our meanders in the neighborhood. (I’m convinced that he’ll have no lasting ‘mental’ trauma from the attack.)

The vet said that if the rear wound does require an extra surgery, we could be looking at total recovery period of as long as . . . six weeks or so. Total. If he does better (and if there’s no complication due to infection, which is my big fear), he could be back up to snuff in about four weeks.

So, as gory and grotesque as his injuries are, we have a lot of hope that he’ll be back to normal by mid-summer. Just in time for those mid-90’s days that we hate going out in!

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Rufus recovery update

No real news over the rest of the day. He rests in his crate, tries to lick his wounds, gets talked down, and goes out to pee every so often. We go to the vet tomorrow to see if it’s okay for him to start using the stairs.

Here’s our boy in late afternoon:

Here’s a view of him with his leg-bandage all covered up by a sweatpant-leg:

I have a few photos that our dog-walker took on the way to the animal hospital. They show the injury in its gruesomeness. If you’re interested in seeing them, let me know and I’ll send you a link, but they’re not something I’d post here for public (and accidental) viewing.

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Rufus recovery

My dad picked up Rufus from the vet yesterday, brought him to our house, and stayed with him all day until Amy got home. After Wednesday’s surgery on his back right leg, during which he had two drains attached to his wounds, Rufus has to stay in his crate till the weekend (except for bathroom breaks). This is so he doesn’t move around and stretch too much, which could lead to his sutures getting torn.

His bandage is starting to slide down a couple of inches, so I’ll have to get some sorta adhesive wrap at the drug store this morning to keep the area covered. I’m going to move my desktop computer downstairs soon so I can work on page layouts and keep him company (and make sure he doesn’t try to lick his wounds).

He’s on antibiotics and pain medication; Amy gave him his pain meds last night about 40 minutes before I got home (despite a 65-minute flight delay, I made it back from Atlanta last night a mere 40-minutes late, zoomed off the plane with my carry-on, and did my best not to speed too much on the drive back). Much like I felt after my demerol injections in the days following my knee surgery (summer 1991), Rufus seems to think that he can go back on the track anytime, once the pain meds kick in.

Shortly after that, his eyes roll back in his head and he gets a little fuzzy about who’s whom.

The vet will check out how his wounds are doing on Saturday, and will let us know if it’s okay for him to go up and down stairs. If not, we’ll move the guest bed down to the basement, so we can sleep down here till he’s ableto join us upstairs. Don’t give me guff about this.

Anyway, the upshot is: the surgeon was optimistic about Ru’s recovery (I’ll have to talk to the vet to make sure our definitions of recovery jibe), I’m back home, my dad stepped up way beyond my expectations, and my wife remains the most wonderful person in the world.

Oh, and I’ve gotta check in with the local police to find out what’s going to go on next with the Aggressive Akita (I misidentified the breed).

And Ru just started snoring. Shh.

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Rufus update

Hi, dear readers. I’m still trapped in Atlanta; the change-of-flight fee came out to $400, and it turns out that Continental doesn’t have a dog-surgery bereavement policy. Ru had his surgery today, and Amy e-mailed me this update:

Dr. Raginski said Ru came through surgery well and is just starting to wake up. There was significant damage in two deep gouges to his right back leg near the knee, which they patched up as best they could by removing a bit of tissue and stitching him up with drains. The drains will keep the wounds open a little bit so they don’t sustain more damage if there is any swelling post-surgery. Because a grey’s skin is so delicate, she said he may pop a few sutures, so we need to keep him confined in a crate for at least the next 2-3 days to make sure he doesn’t use his leg at all.

Dr. Raginski said that she doesn’t expect the worst-case scenario to happen, but I wanted to know what we might be facing: The wound may dehis (spontaneously open) if the skin doesn’t heal well or if the muscle tissue becomes infected (which would be much worse than a problem with his skin). At that point, he’d need more surgery either to restitch the skin or to take away even more tissue.

But at this point a second surgery is still up in the air. We’ll have to see how he heals after this one.

I’ll keep you all posted as I hear more about our boy. Thanks for the good thoughts you’re sending our way. :)

It looks like Ru’s going to stay at the animal hospital for another night, so they can keep an eye on him and try to keep him from noshing on his sutures. I think my dad’s going to pick him up tomorrow and take care of him till we get home.

I also received photos from my dog-walker of Rufus on the way to the animal hospital. But I looked at one of them and realized that they would only make me feel more enraged and powerless. So I’m not going to look at them till I’m home and able to pet my beloved dog.

I’m sticking with my original conference plan for this evening and taking some work-pals to the Braves game. They know Ru’s my “fur-kid” and understand both why I’m pretty distraught and why their friendship & joviality will be a good thing for me.

Because if I spend another night brooding in my hotel room (and maybe running a few more miles on a treadmill in the hotel gym), I’m gonna go crazy.

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Bad news

Rufus got attacked by a neighborhood dog yesterday evening. He’s having the first of two surgeries today to patch up the two gouges in his rear left leg and put in a drain. The second surgery will be in 3-4 weeks. If you’re the praying / wishful thinking / dog-reiki kind, then please send some good vibes Rufus’ way.

I’m away from home at a conference, so I’m feeling particularly helpless and frustrated. Also, I’m brimming with rage, since the neighborhood dog attacked another dog two weeks ago, but the owners continued to have faith in the electronic fence that was supposed to keep their unattended dog in its yard.

So there may not be any entertaining posts on this site for a little while.

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What It Is: 5/18/09

What I’m reading: Arcadia, by Tom Stoppard, George Sprott: 1894-1975, by Seth, Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s Abandon the Old in Tokyo.

What I’m listening to: The soundtrack to the Life Aquatic, and a new Mad Mix I’m assembling.

What I’m watching: Bottle Shock, some Yankees games, and some game 7s in the NBA semis.

What I’m drinking: An awesome Prosecco on Saturday night, to go with Bottle Shock.

What Rufus is up to: Well, he’s a little disappointed that we didn’t get out to the semi-annual greyhound picnic on Sunday, but the weather was just blech. We’ll make it up to him next weekend with some weekend guests who will lavish extra affection on him. Also: this.

Where I’m going: Atlanta today for the BIO conference! (with a dinner at Bacchanalia (not as decadent as it sounds) and a Braves game thrown in, along with a visit to my pals Joy & Miguel in Decatur)

What I’m happy about: It’s my last business flight till November! (unless I go to the show in Madrid in October)

What I’m sad about: Being away from my wife & doggie.

What I’m worried about: That I’ve landed on a planet where the political comments of a beauty pageant contestant (remember: they’re ditzy till proven smart) are grounds for a new culture war.

What I’m pondering: Whether I’ve seen enough good movies to post a Top 10 Movies of the decade list at the end of this year.