Hi all!!  New to the "Tripawd" life with our Great Pyrenees Hobbes.

His, and ours, story starts last December.  The Pyr Rescue my wife and I foster for sent out a plea for Pyr on "death row".  The local shelter had had Hobbes for the standard 7 day stray hold.  They had picked him up after he had been hit by a car and was on the side of the road.  Our rescue got the call that the shelter had a full blood Pyr no one was going to adopt because of his broken rear leg.  

Our coordinator made some calls, found 3 of 4 Vets that would do the surgery, IF he had a foster home to go to.  So, they sent out the email.  Five minutes after I saw the email, I knew my wife would be calling (it took her about 2 minutes to call!!).  "I don't care what it takes, this guy does not die!!"  With my marching orders, I got a hold of the coordinator, told her we would take him.  Mind you, we had four of our own and two fosters already!

Hobbes was picked up that day from the shelter, transported to the hospital and operated on the next morning.  Originally, they felt he was a good candidate for saving the leg.  He spent the next two months with two pins in his leg, hobbling around as best as he could.  After the pins were removed, he still wouldn't use his leg.  Several xrays later, it was determined that the "bone callous" enveloped his knee and there was only one thing left to do.  

After much wondering, wishing and talking with several other Veterinarians, it was decided, for Hobbes's benefit and health, to remove the leg.  So, on April 8th, I dropped him off and he had surgery later that morning.  We picked him up the next day, kept him "confined" for several days until the OR drugs wore off, and slowly let him get back into his "pack". {btw, the vet that did the surgery, both to put the pins in and to remove the leg, wanted to know why it healed the way it did.  What he found was bone shards that had migrated into his knee becoming a foreign body.)

By the end of January, we knew that the one thing we could not do, was let him go!  Our rescue knows (we gave them an application), that he would be a foster fail (not bad for him being the 7th foster thus far) and that we were prepared to take him, and his medical bills on right then.  One reason for this that for his first week with us, I slept on the kitchen floor with him.  I guess you could say we connected during that week. Well, I connected, he was still hopped up on drugs.  During his first few weeks with us, two of our fosters got adopted and we had to send our first Pyr, Max, over the Rainbow Bridge.  We have since gotten a new foster, hoped that he would start using his leg, and came to grips, finally, that the best thing for him was to remove his leg.

Mind you, neither me, or my wife, has ever had a k-9 with a broken leg, much less had to deal with an amputation!!  So, here starts our journey.  With one "tripaw" and four "monkey dogs", we will see what we need to learn, figure out and discover.