I agree completely.  Bonnie is progressing and constantly surprising me.  She seemed to take FOREVER to go to the bathroom, but in hindsight, she was right on schedule.  Her schedule.  I am now following her schedule and she is teaching me how she will walk on three legs.  Every minute of every day is a blessing and I thank you all for helping us get there.

This is a very good topic indeed.

I remember reading about a million websites/stories/articles on the very first day that Darcy had her diagnosis and surgery.  She'd not come home from the vets yet and I was trying to prepare myself as much as possible.  Virtually everything I read seemed to say that by day two or three or four, the dog would be up on its feet, doing normal stuff like toileting and getting up and down on his/her own.

When it came to day four after Darcys surgery, she was still laying in one position, refusing to get up, being very difficult when we tried to get her up and peeing in her bed.  I'd not read anything that anyone had written about their dog being difficult like this and I remember, on that day, being at my very lowest ebb and wondering what the heck I'd done to my dog.  How is it that everyone elses dog was up and about, even playing - and my dog was still peeing in her bed and refusing to move.  (That was how I felt at that time).

But then, I remembered that all dogs are individual and Darcy has always been more individual than most LOL.  When she was spayed, we had a good few days of diva-style performances where she lay flat on her side and refused to move.  She seems to not do very well with surgery - maybe the aneasthetic makes her a bit funny or maybe just the psychological effect of it takes her a while to recover from.  And maybe she's just very, very stubborn.  Actually, there's no maybe about that... LOL.

And now, we're 10 and a half months down the line from surgery.  My dog has the worst gait of any tripod I've ever seen.  She never put the work in to teach herself to do lovely walking on just three legs rather than four, so she's made things harder than they need to be.  I do see people looking at her sometimes and they must be thinking "oh that poor dog - look how she walks" but I've come to the conclusion that I don't care what they think and neither does Darcy!

When Darcy had 4 legs, she was the worlds laziest dog.  Seriously.  Why I thought that would change when she lost a leg, I really do not know.  I must have been going through one of my more nutty phases!  So, when people visit and she's laying flat out on the settee, or when we take her to an event and she spends the whole day laying on a dog bed, it's nothing to do with her lack of front right leg (other than I do know that she's lost a bit of confidence).  It's to do with the fact that she's still the worlds laziest dog!  Yes, she may have run around a bit more, played a bit more and been a little happier to be dragged off to some event when she had 4 legs but she was always happiest when she was resting - and thats how she's happiest now.

10 months and 20 days on from That Very Bad Day, I can report that we are all very happy and content and we live for today.  Tomorrow can take care of itself.  (But we are starting to think, in very tentative terms about the mother of all parties...)