The Amazing Bipedal Willow We love our vet, but she was a bit over her head with our little Willow. We took Willow to UC Davis' Small Animal Clinic, where orthopedic surgeons accustomed to working on really small bones worked some magic on her broken legs, which have just refused to knit together until now. Hopefully with a little help from a bone marrow transplant she'll have a little luck and this will be her last surgery! Send good healing vibes our way, please? We should know in another month or so if her legs are finally knitting together. They're doing everything else right -- forming bone calluses and the like, they're just not fusing. But that was before this latest surgery. If all goes well, she'll be out of splints in another three months. Anyway, Willow is now on really little, light splints. The surgeon told us to let her decide when to put weight on the front legs (and she does need to put a little weight on them at some point, or they'll never get strong). None of us anticipated that Willow would adapt to her condition quite so well, unfortunately -- she has taken to that bipedal walk again, but is now quite graceful and stable about it. She can walk from the front door out onto the lawn, wander around a bit, do her "business", and then walk back to the front door -- all without her front legs touching the ground at all! She's amazing to watch. We took some pix of her this 4th of July weekend while we were in the yard. Normally we keep her inside, but she's so good about taking it easy on her legs we felt safe having her out for a bit. She was quite good, and didn't even try chasing the chickens (though our big meany rooster might have something to do with that .. but that's another story).
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