Calli's Story

In a couple of my posts I have made a passing reference to Calli having mobility issues. 

Today is exactly four years since the accident happened. 

Prior to that, in the late summer of 2005, she had her first major medical issue.  We were at the farmers market in White Rock.  We had gone early to set up, so that I had time to get some flower bouquets made up before the market started.  Larry took Calli and Jake to a park to play ball.  At the park, while scooping a ball up from the grass, she caught her lower jaw on a concrete water valve box that was protruding an inch or so above the ground.  She lost a lot of teeth, and fractured her bottom jaw about an inch from the front.  I drove her back home to our vet who was available that Sunday morning.  She had two surgeries, one to get the jaw wired back together, and one to remove a canine tooth that was interfering with another.  Six weeks later she went under again to have the wiring removed.  It was a long time before I felt comfortable with her fetching a ball or chewing on a bone.

There are a lot of teeth missing in her upper jaw, and some in the bottom as well.

In the spring of 2007, she dealt with three abscesses behind her eye (retro bulbar abscesses).  The first one was causing her a lot of pain, and it was drained.  Even after it healed up, she did not seem right.  She didn't want to open her mouth wide enough to pick up the ball.  A month later her head swelled up again, and the abscess was drained once more.  The vet said it was a sterile abscess, there was no infection, and it contained no foreign body.  This time the swelling didn't cause her any pain.  Then it happened again, but this time the hot compresses caused it to weep out through the skin, the swelling went down, and that was the end of it.  The vet wondered if somehow it was related to the accident with her jaw, maybe something out of alignment....?  He couldn't figure it out.

Her worst accident happened June 9, 2006.  It was graduation weekend for David, with Prom that day, and Convocation the next.  Needless to say, our hearts weren't in it.

Here is a little movie I made telling the story.  It is my first attempt with Movie Maker, and I'm pretty happy how it came out.  I won't count the hours I spent on it, fumbling around within the limitations of Movie Maker, trying to figure it out, and then trying to remember how I got there so I could do it again. (I'm not particularly computer savvy).  It's a pretty simplified version of what happened over those couple of months.

I spent hours working her legs, pinching her toes to make the muscles contract so that she kept some muscle tone.

We actually got a wheelchair for her, but between ordering it, and it getting here, she improved enough that she never used it.  We have kept it because we thought she might need it as she aged.  She's nearly 10 1/2 now, and so far so good. 

I still get a warm feeling when I see her bounce around (Calli style).  Life is good:)