Still Minding the Dog Some More Again

I know I've apologised for being a dog bore but I'm sure that some of you may be wondering what became of our Maxie.

If you remember, we were worried about his wound not healing properly and his not using his leg as well as we had expected.  To cut a long story short (thank goodness for that, I hear you say), we took him back to the vet where he had the surgery done for investigations. X-rays showed that he had fractured his fibula, the other bone in his lower leg.  Apparently, this is not an unknown complication of the TPLO procedure.  The fibula is attached to the top of the tibia and is put under stress by the rotation produced by the surgery.  In mature dogs, the bone is relatively fragile and a knock can make it snap in these circumstances.  That explained why Max was still lame, and the vet explained that it would heal of its own accord and not to worry. He seemed unconcerned about the wound, expecting it to heal soon.

The wound did dry but developed a cyst-like swelling and began to weep again.  We went to our own vet to get that checked and were sent home with antibiotics and instructions to keep the wound clean with a strong saline solution.  He had to continue wearing his lampshade.

To cut a shortened story shorter, I am pleased to report that his wound finally dried up last Monday, and he has not had to wear his lampshade since.  He also began using his leg much more normally.  On Friday, he went for his eight-week post op. x-ray that showed his bones were healing nicely.  We can now begin exercise - just ten minutes twice a day to begin with, building up over the next three or four months.

The most surprising thing is that Max seems to know that he has been discharged from the vet and suddenly wants to play and have fun again.  He was exactly the same on being discharged after his previous TPLO.  Perhaps he has merely picked up on our relief at being let out of prison.  Perhaps he really has understood all our careful explanations...

New Layout

I fancied a change, something colourful that would brighten up our lives. I chose a different template from the many provided by Blogger and applied it to all my blogs (it would be useful if you could do that globally for all blogs in one go rather than one at a time). I hope you like it.

The image in the heading is an extract from a photograph I took one frosty day last winter. I hope you like that too. Actually, getting the image properly sized was a bit of a pain. There are some problems with Blogger if you want to do something more than use what's in the box. Even though Blogger includes the facility to place an image in the heading, I had to find the exact width by a combination of reading the page's source to get some idea of the heading width, and then use trial and error to get the measurement accurate. As it is, I think it's one pixel oversize in Internet Explorer 7, probably because Microsoft can't get the html box model right.

Anyway, it works in IE 5.5, IE 6, Opera 9, Chrome and Firefox 3. So, if you upgraded your browser to IE7, you'll just have to live with a narrow white line down the right-hand side of the border under the image. Alternatively, update your browser to something decent. Opera, Chrome and Firefox are all free.

I use Firefox 3 almost exclusively both professionally and for leisure. As well as being, in my opinion, the world's best browser in it's basic form, it has all manner of add-ons available for whatever way you want to use it. For example, I have a load of stuff added on to help with web development but, if that doesn't float your boat, there's plenty of other add-ons that may. It's also available for a wide range of operating systems, so whatever different systems you encounter you can stick with the same browser (provided that your IT department allows).

Well, what started out as a trivial announcement of the obvious change in appearance of this Bloggery (obvious to those who have been here before, at least) has become a plug for non-microsoft browsers. No apologies offered. At least it hasn't turned into a rant about web standards and Microsoft's inability to handle them properly, and having to hack my nice, standard developments just to accommodate the shortcomings of Internet Explorer. Oops! There I go...