Thursday is Orthopedic Day

First thing today, Karin took Bessy, a dog rescued from the Kachou market area, where dogs are under threat of being poisoned. She walks strangely, her back legs shuffling quickly, almost like she is a human that is desperate to go to the toilet & dare not take big steps, holding their legs together!! Know what I mean?















Anyway, after Xray, the vet explained that both hip joints had severe problems. One ball joint had disappeared completely and the other was not attached to the femur but still in position. poor thing, must have been suffering agony. The vet said there was no real hope that she would improve and surgery was out of the question. He said we should try to ensure she exercised the joints but not to over do it. She would also benefit from swimming.

Next up was Hillside Daeng (HD), the dog with a problem front leg. The vet saw that HD didn't use the leg at all and after Xray, diagnosed that the elbow/knee had been broken and the upper leg had no joint to hinge on. So the story we heard last week was true, when the cast was on the leg, it got wet and failed to do its job. (How can we stop other helpful dog loving folks in say.... 2 years time, going through the same as we have, to find that a negative prognosis and put HD through the stress of a trip to the vet??) Personal reminder... Talk to vets about RF tagging dogs with chips to record vet history! Silly girl!

When we picked up HD we also found a pigeon. As you can see from the pic, it doesn't look too happy with fleshy lumps sticking out each side of its head where its ears are and had runny eyes. We took it along for a professional diagnosis. First vet visited laughed and said they had no experience of birds. Second vet we visited, laughed even more but at least did a scrape and microscope check to try to understand the problem. No experience with birds....

















Met up with a charitable, nice intentioned guy for lunch. This expat would like to donate a fixed percentage of money his syndicate can earn from building projects. This novel idea would certainly benefit the shelter and we are keen to put any folks needing building work done, in touch with him.

After lunch, we returned to the hospital and picked up the dogs after Xray & delivered them back to their homes.

Next was a visit to Airport Plaza to meet the management team there, regarding a future distribution of leaflets/flyers and an adoption / sales booth.

Whilst at the plaza, we checked out the car park residents. We found 4 dogs in the area where staff enter & exit the complex and one of the staff helped us find them and catch one that was limping badly.

Damkaow the vet said, probably had a car run over her foot & leg. We will give her some R&R back at the shelter and arrange her sterilisation too.