Tall Tails of a Bionic Dog

This post brought to you by Hills Pet Nutrition. All opinions are 100% mine.

I’ve blogged a lot about my first babies — the ones of the furry variety. I made them dance and wear Snuggies. They prepared me for kids in some ways, and in some ways left me completely unprepared (dichotomy, anyone?)

And while they have taken a back seat to one certain blog baby, that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t do anything in the world to secure their health and safety.

Dana K from Really, what were we thinking? wrote the other day about her own furbaby’s surgery that cost her an arm and a leg and it reminded me of my own bionic dog — and how I’ve never really documented her story.

Truffles was not a year old when we moved to Florida. She was happy, energetic and healthy — and extremely happy that we lived in an apartment with a fenced in puppy playground. My husband took her out to one day in May 2008 and somehow in the middle of playing tag with a bigger dog she tore a ligament in her left leg. A trip to the vet told us she’d be needed leg surgery to tore the equivalent of her ACL. They would replace the joints with bionic pins that would last “the life of the dog”.

As her surgery approached, we tried to keep her calm which is nearly impossible to do when your dog is half Jack Russell. The day before her surgery, we let her run wild around our apartment.

In the process, she tore her other ligament.

And the bionic knees that were supposed to last the life of the dog? Our wonder dog was no match for those man-made parts. She ended up tearing the right knee two more times. If you’re keeping track, that’s three surgeries.

The doctor learned his lesson after the third and put a cast on her leg.

How pitiful is that? Probably not as pitiful as this:

Three years later, she’s still rockin’ the bionic legs and using them to go on all sorts of Florida adventures.

We want to keep her as healthy and mobile as we can now that she’ll soon have a very mobile REAL baby to keep up with. I’m excited to register  for the Hill’s Science Diet Healthy Mobility Challenge and receive a  Hill’s Healthy Mobility Coupon — $30 in coupons! — and be automatically entered in the Sweepstakes where 30 winners will receive FREE PET FOOD for a year.

FREE PET FOOD PEOPLE.

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Have you ever had an animal with bionic parts?