A New Part of Our Lives

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I have an older dog. Sasha will be 14 in October. We have had her since she was 8 weeks old. When she was 2 she started to go lame in one of her rear knees. We had it looked at, and long story short, opted for surgery, a tplo. A tplo, tibial-plateau-leveling osteotomy, is a surgery performed on dogs to stabilize the stifle joint after ruptures of the cranial cruciate ligament (analogous to the anterior cruciate ligament [ACL] in humans, and sometimes colloquially called the same).The vet who did the surgery told us that over 50% of dogs who have the issue in one leg will need surgery in the other rear leg. That was Sasha. So we had both back legs done. She is my $10,000 dog. The same vet told us that she would probably develop severe arthritis in those knees when she got older. Again, he was correct. About 2 weeks ago, she stopped putting weight on the left rear leg. After some xrays, and lots of meds, she is hobbling around a bit better. But we are taking turns sleeping downstairs with her as she can't manage the stairs any longer. I love her tremendously. She is he best dog in the world and I tell her so regularly. I am a published poet and I have a poetry blog. Here is a poem I posted on it about this time with my dog Blunted i am stuck in sadness its teeth sharper than i recall its fear an ooze that seeps liquids never run-- they fade leaving stains brown and red in the sun copyright/all rights reserved Audrey Howitt 2016