Well, we just got back from a two-day, 1800 km round trip to take poor little Bandit to the vet. On Saturday I was just getting ready to leave work when Gary rang in near-hysterics - Bandit had jumped the half-door that we have to keep the dogs out of the main shed, and he'd gone to put her out over the top of door, when she wriggled and fell, landed badly on the uneven stone pavers, and broke her back leg. She'd only fallen about two feet, but broke her tibia and fibula. I raced home to find Gary in tears holding her still in the courtyard. Gary's usually very calm in an emergency, but not this time, he was so upset, so I made him get the first aid bag and make some ice packs while I put Bandit on the bed to see what I could do.
She was really good and only whimpered a little while I splinted her leg, then got Gaz to sit with her while I rang around to find out which of the country vets was closest and able to help. I got hold of Lucy, who is a cattle dog vet specialist in Newman, which is 450 km north of us, and she said that if we had any Tramadol or Neurofen we could give Bandit some of that, and gave me the weight calculations. Thank god we happened to have some Tramadol in Gary's bathroom bag from his surgery last August, so I dosed her up and secured her in a ring of pillows next to my side of the bed - it was dark and raining, and way too dangerous to drive so we had to wait until morning and check if all the floodways were clear. Gary was in a state, he felt terrible. So I spent the night holding Gary's hand on one side and Bandit's front paw on the other while one moaned and the other whimpered, then both started snoring.
Lucy was waiting for us at the Newman clinic when we finally got there at lunch time. Bandit was such a good girl and managed to sleep a little in the car. Lucy anaesthetised her, took X-rays, and then I helped her put a proper splint bandage on Bandit's leg - a big fat sort of "soft cast", then Lucy put me on airway watch while she looked at the x-rays. It was a bad break, so Lucy had to call Richard, the vet up at Tom Price (another mining town further north) to see if he had supplies and equipment for pinning the bones, as they didn't have any at Newman. Poor Gary was a wreck by this point, just silently helping us and bowed down with guilt. Both vets said it was not an unusual injury for a young dog - it was weirdly like little Sams' busted leg, just landing at the wrong angle in what was a seemingly insignificant fall. We've tipped both dogs over the dog door heaps of times when they try to sneak in - so it could've been me that did it, it was just bad luck.
We waited for Bandit to come out of the anaesthetic, dosed her up with morphine, then set off for Tom Price with Bandit in my arms, bolstered up with pillows, all floppy from the drugs. We took the shortcut through Karijini National Park and got to the next vet's after dark. Richard & Michelle, the Tom Price vets, were amazing and organised a motel room for us once they'd got little Bandit settled and on a drip. With her big fat splint and all the drugs, she was comfortably asleep; we went off to sit in the motel room, feeling awful. Gary wouldn't hurt a fly and I've never seen him so devastated. I was really upset for Bandit and wanted to be angry at Gaz, but I knew it was just an accident, so I was coping by going into production manager mode, busy on the phone transferring our life savings into the card account and trying to think how we were going to deal with getting Bandit home later in the week.
Anyway, we went back to the vet's in the morning so Richard could give us his treatment plan and a quote, having looked at Bandit's x-rays in more detail. He said he'd try to make it as cheap as possible, but we both said of course that the most important thing was what was best for Bandit in the long term. So he's putting a long pin in her tibia - she'll be splinted but not wearing a cast, and will have to stay at the vet's for a couple of weeks before she can come home. Richard will do the surgery, then take her down to Newman where Lucy and Tracey will look after her as Richard's surgery doesn't have 24 hour staff. As luck would have it, Richard has to go to Perth later in the month, so he'll collect Bandit on his way down and bring her to us. Bandit HOWLED when she saw us. "Where am I? Why can't I go with you?" We felt awful. Michelle jotted down all her hand signals, and we sadly headed back to Meeka. It was a shit drive - we blew THREE tyres (we had four racked up on the roof thank god) and then the air conditioner fan shat itself, so we were hot, headachy and Not Speaking by the time we got home.
The bill for all this is going to come to over $5000 - Gary was ready to go and hang himself, and just looked at me & said, "What can I possibly do to make up for this?" and I said, "Sell the Holden and all the motorcycles." Ironically, even though I knew this was really hard for him to do, it ended up being a salve for both of us - he went straight into the shed, dusted off the bikes, got me to take photos, and helped me write up some ads for them, so we went to bed feeling a bit better about things. Gary's used to physically "fixing" things, so having something concrete to do to help the situation was the best thing I could suggest.
So that was our weekend. Bloody hell!
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