JUNE 2006: “You're going to be gone how long!?!?”
Well, it's June and most of you already know TC was gone for three weeks in May, three weeks that passed, for me, like a kidney stone. I was devastated! I told her when she got back that I would never let her do that again...as if she would listen to me. Anyway, while I was here at Casa Ingaso dealing with CAT EMERGENCIES and the language barrier, she was off gallivanting around Washington State and parts of British Columbia with her sister, Jessica.
If you click on this image, it will take you on a short pictorial journey with our intrepid traveller. I only have one thing to say about it all: "Brrrrrr! Am I glad I didn't go and freeze my patootie like she did." No thanks, that's why I moved to Panama: to stay warm!
Anyway, she's home and things are back to normal, well, if you call Bobo getting hit by a car again normal. Really, it now stands: Cars: 3; Bobo: 0.
TC and I had just dropped our Santa Barbara friends off at the hotel where they were staying before catching an early morning flight home, when we found out that Bobo was lying bloodied and bruised over at Lamelot. "What!?!?" We drove over in the dark to find the poor mutt barely able to stand and not just because his already bad front leg was actually broken this time. He was also disoriented and weak.
Once again full of anxiety for the little guy, listening to him cry and moan, we drove him back to Ingaso and set up a trauma station on our kitchen island. All of Bo's injuries were to his under-carriage: deep cuts on his knees and legs, skin abrasions on his groin and paws, and what looked to be a crushed fore leg, the tire tread almost visible in its multiple wounds and dirt. I surmised his bad leg tripped him up or the driver of the car tried to hit him and managed to run over the bad left leg, which forced the poor dog down into the pavement where he received the rest of his injuries—a resident of Lamelot found him twitching in a ditch.
TC cleaned and dressed all Bobo's wounds, then used Vetwrap, from the leishmaniasis clinics she's aided, to wrap his broken leg. After everything we could do was done, I shoved an aspirin down his throat and we laid him on his foam bed to see how he handled it. You could tell he was in pain and uncomfortable no matter what position he lay in, but he had stopped crying and moaning, and seemed ready to sleep, if he could.
We didn't sleep well, either, and I kept thinking he had internal injuries we didn't know about that would kill him during the night. But, early the next morning, there he was wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, although not to active. He still wouldn't put any weight on the broken leg, but he could hobble around on the other three. He ate, he drank,
he came out of the great room and wobbled along the deck, finally curling up in the front next to some potted plants. What a dog. Still, he wasn't a pretty picture, unless you like purple. (Click the image.)
Okay, we had to wait till Saturday to take him to the vet, but Bobo is fine. The vet gave him a good bill of health, took off all his purty purple bandages, then wrapped the broken leg so that it looks like a salami. Bobo didn't care, because after eating his first pain pill, he was motoring around on all threes, head bopping up and down with his one good front leg. What a dog! (Click here for a video of Hopalong!)
Oh, before we let our friends go, we took them to the Miraflores Locks on the Panama Canal, near Panama City. It was their last day and we were on the way to their hotel and our route went by the locks and they'd been bugging us to do some sight-seeing and we didn't want to but what're you gonna do when visitors ask for things like that, say, "No!"? Anyway, if you click on the image it will take you to another short pictorial of boats going through the Panama Canal's Miraflores locks, the last set on the Pacific side.