So I went to the hospital in Omaha this evening to pick up Kalia. They all loved her, at least they acted like they did while I was there! After I settled the bill with the promise that they get to keep my first two children I got to see her. She whimpered for several minutes straight and was just so happy to see me.

Surprisingly she is walking really well. She has a big bulky dressing on that I can take off next week and we need to keep her corraled, no stairs, etc. She has a duragesic pain patch on that I am supposed to take off on Saturday and get this: the dose is 75mcg!!!!! For those of you that do not know, that would put me out for several several days. I’m thinkin’….no wonder the dog can walk she has no feeling what-so-ever! And, they tell me…”she’s eating soft food ok and hasn’t had any problems with her pills but is a little nauseated from the pain patch”. Hmmmm. Well, a piece of ham, a piece of cheese, a piece of bread and a can of puppy food later……I still had to jam her pills down her throat.

She is lying there whimpering and you can hear her stomach rolling and she is urping…yes, urping. I’m going to let her sleep tonite comfortably and the patch will have to go tomorrow. They gave me some pain pills to give her too so we’ll just have to switch. That is just what I need, an urpy dog that has to be forced fed, watered, etc when I can’t even remember the last time I actually was able to cook a meal for my own husband and myself!

Her little whimpering and sad little face do make me feel bad though. I am a schmuck owner for even allowing a situtation to occur where this happened. So, here we are way more money later than is legal for me to post on here and I have a hurt puppy that needs a lot of tlc and help for EIGHT WEEKS! Did I mention she can’t go up and down stairs ~oh~ and that we have A LOT of stairs in our home and out to the yard as well?!!!!

When it rains it pours. Last night at the hotel the dogs got away from me (they spend the days in the backyard at the house and nights with us in the hotel. At any rate, I couldn’t get them to come back and Adam and I drove around and around trying to find them for quite some time. Amazingly Holly found her way back to us at the hotel. We never did find Kalia. We looked and looked and went to bed sickened that we couldn’t find her. We decided to leave the gate to our backyard open in case she found her way home.

At 6:30 this am Adam drove to the house to see if she found her way home and she had. She had also gotten through the doggy door and up the four steps into the mudroom. Adam walked in and her tail started wagging. But, her leg was hanging.

Kalia got hit by a car sometime during the night. She was dehydrated and in shock. She has road rash all over and a pulmonary contusion on the right side (bruised right lung). Both of her leg bones in her front left leg were broken very badly and poked through her skin. Adam didn’t realize this at first he just knew her leg wasn’t right and he scooped her up and put her in the car and came to me at the hotel. We didn’t even take her out of the car…he just took off for Lincoln to the Veterinary Medical Center we use.

Our vet could not treat this severe of a fracture and initially talked about sending us to K State’s Vet hospital (ugh!!!) but there happened to be a K State Orthopedic Surgeon that is board certified in Omaha today! So she called him to find out if he’d see Kalia and she came in to tell us the estimate of what it would most likely cost. This is kind of when I finally decided to lose it. The poor vet, I just cried…dripping all over Kalia’s head. It just seems like one thing after another right now. And, financially my gosh!!!! Well, what do you do…we went to Omaha and he is awesome. (note: right about now my sister is probably thinking to herself, you two need to have a kid) He really wanted to do surgery on her today but because of the dehydration and her lung could not. He is quite concerned about the risk of infection with the bone having gone through the skin. She will have a plate and 6 screws placed hopefully tomorrow if she is stable enough.

We are in awe that she found her way home. What amazing instinct these animals have. And, her tail…Adam says she was just a wagging it away when she saw him come to her.