Happy Litha if you're Celtic, or Pagan, or Wiccan. Gather herbs tonight.
Gee, don't I sound relaxed? I slept for maybe 7 hours last night. Interrupted several times as always, but still a good night. I'm flying to London tomorrow for a couple days of meetings in Porton Down, and I was complaining to a colleague about the difficulty I have adjusting to the time change, and how I wish I could sleep on planes. He suggested I stop by the health food store and pick up some melatonin. Might as well give it a try, I thought, and while I was there I picked up some valerian root capsules, which were on the shelf next to it. There's no way to know if they really helped, or if the effect was psychological, or if it was just the relief of Friday having rolled around, or the relief of having taken Saint to the vet to have the staples removed from his incision earlier in the day.
I intended to blog about Saint's surgery, but the pictures I took were pretty disturbing. He's feeling pretty good now though. About a year ago Saint ruptured the ACL, or rather, the CCL, as it's called in dogs, in his left hind leg. I took him to the vet, but he was barely limping and she didn't think it could be a complete tear. Maybe it was, maybe not. During the months that followed it did tear completely. The joint stabilized but became arthritic, and a couple of months ago it got worse. Two weeks ago he had TTA surgery, by which time the cartilege between the tibia and femur had been torn and the knee was severely arthritic.
These are the "before" pics. His surgery was on June 6, so these were taken one or two days post-surgery:
The injury:
The insult:
The icepack (bags of frozen peas):
Not a happy camper.
Here's the "after" pic, taken a few minutes ago:
Still not very cheerful because he can't run and play--I couldn't get him to smile for the camera--but he's feeling fine.