Backyard Accident

The other day, two of our girls, Bean (9 yo whippet) and Sky (5 yo aussie) were mad-dashing it to the backyard.. inspecting a noisy neighbor barker. We think what happened is the two were side by side running… while Bean is faster, Sky is more muscle – and we think Sky bumped into Bean which sent Bean sideways into the wooden rainbow playset.

It did enough damage we feared broken ribs… so off to the vet. Bean was a trooper. They did a couple of xrays and found, surprisingly to us all, vets, techs, etc, no broken bones. But, the damage was deep.. Bean is suffering from some major bruising and muscle damage.. swelling, fluid build-up and lots and lots of pain.

We expect the pain to last several weeks, and the healing process to take a good 4-6 weeks. Bean is taking her anti-inflammatories and pain meds with cheese, her favorite – while she protests the pain, the cheese helps.

Periodically, she’ll start screaming in pain. She’s a tough dog, always has been. She’s not a whiner unless to tell you she needs to do business, then she’ll wake us in the middle of the night to make a potty run.. or she’ll whine to let us know there are a few spare chicken nuggets left in the happy meal bag, of which she’d happily eat them up to keep them from wasting… but pain.. no.. she’s not been a whiner.. so when she’s been screaming in pain, our hearts just broke for her. We were worried about her enough that we made another run to the vet to just make sure all was well.

The vet was awesome, rechecked her, had another vet do a check too and came to the same conclusions as above.. just massive soreness and time will heal.

In the meantime, we keep up with the meds and I just love on her and rub and hold her “owie” until the pain subsides. We think what is happening is when she’s awake, she is “bracing” the injury – in that her muscles are tightened around the injury to protect it… but when she falls asleep, her body relaxes.. so when she wakes, some times, she either does it so quickly, or she forgets, and moves the wrong way, or too fast, causing spasms of pain… leading to the heart-wrenching screams.

To see our babies in pain is just so hard… I’d take the pain from her if I could.