Another adventure, another first

And not a good one. Molly has a fractured leg. 😦

I didn’t see what happened though I have a guess. I suspect she got it caught in the wire shelving while running around and wrenched it — hard. I did hear a loud squeal as I was falling asleep and assumed it was roughhousing. You know what they say about assuming. (The first one. Apparently it’s widely attributed to Oscar Wilde.) Truthfully though, I’m glad I didn’t investigate; there was nothing I could have done at night and I would have just been freaking out all night.

When I went to feed them they didn’t come running for their breakfast. I turned on the light and both were just kind of lying there. I put down the food and Polly came over but not Molly. I picked her up and she screamed and hissed and clawed at me. When I put her down she ran off on three legs.

I didn’t even ask; I emailed my foster coordinator and the vet coordinator that I was taking her to the vet. The vet’s not there right at opening but the amazing Nicole was. She had a feel and said “Yup, something’s not right. We’ll probably have to do an x-ray.” I can’t authorize an x-ray and, with the vet not there anyway, I left her and headed to work.

Just after lunch I got this message:

She has a very swollen and painful hock joint on her left hind leg and most likely a fracture. [The vet] said that it is not that easy to see but it looks like a small fracture on the back of her tibia right near the joint.

She does not need a splint or bandage since nothing is displaced or needs stabilizing, but she will need 6 weeks of cage rest and a repeat [x-ray] in a few weeks.

So we don’t even get dramatic photos! They also sent pain meds home with her. Poor thing. So I’ll have to cage them both. That’s not going to be fun! When it happened, even though she couldn’t walk, wouldn’t eat, and screamed when I touched her, she would lay there playing with a toy! I hope, given her age, that I’ll be able to let her out supervised pretty soon. “Fortunately”, they’re on the lice treatment until the end of  December anyway, so it only delays their possible adoption by a little bit.