Ruby is a German Shorthaired Pointer. She is a year old on 4th June. She lives in Brisbane, Australia, with Nichola, Andy (Mum and Dad), and Max (aged 7), her owners, and her great uncle James (11 year old GSP, really her great uncle).

On 4th May Ruby and James tunnelled out under the fence of our property and had a run through the bush. Ruby chased a deer onto the road and the poor lady driving the ute had no chance to avoid her.

She ran home about half a kilometre on three good legs and a shattered rear left leg. We took her to the vet who joined her broken bones together but warned us that infection and loss of blood supply might cause us problems yet.

Sure enough, after a couple of days a tell-tale and extremely unpleasant smell came from the bandages and Ruby was obviously very sick. By a week after the accident the vet said that the leg had to come off to save her life. We were devastated. She is such a beautiful dog and so active. How would she cope?

On the Saturday, the day after the operation, we went to pick her up from the vet's. Her back end had been shaved and looked unpleasantly like a stitched up oven ready chicken.

At first she was reluctant to leave her cage but when we got her outside into the vet's yard she just started to run around! Eventually the vet said that maybe we should stop her running! She was so full of joy and so different to the unhappy, sick puppy that we'd had for the past week. We tried to keep her calm for 14 days (hmm, some hopes) until her stitches came out.

When she could finally go for walks she was back to her former unguided missile self. She roars around our dog walk and still jumps through the bush and flushes out quail. Ruby seems not to have noticed her missing leg. The only indication that something has changed is that she lies down more and tends to lean on things when standing.

It's a big decision to deprive an animal of a limb. You can't explain to them what's going to happen and why. I'm sure other three-legged dog owners would agree that it's worth the heartache for the dog to have a long and happy life after the trauma.

She's had her stitches out for over a week now and she gets her twice daily walks. We call Ruby and James 'Thunder and Lightning'. You can guess who is the lightning...

Nichola Moore
Thursday May 31, 2007

This is Sophie, she is a rescued retired racing Greyhound.
She was pretty successful and raced 155 races.
She just turned 6 years old in April. We adopted Sophie in Feb 06.

She was a very happy and playful girl who loves to play and chase her two brothers, also Greyhounds. On March 31st Sophie began limping; we all wondered what she did to herself. I took her to the vet and they just gave her some pain meds and told us to call if she doesn't get any better.

Well, weeks passed and she wasn't getting better.
So we took her to an Orthopedic vet where she was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma. This was such a hard decision to make, but on May 22nd she had her rear leg amputated and started chemo on June 7th.

She is doing very well with getting around.
It is super to see her hop around, like she'd been doing it forever.

Thursday June 7, 2007