Update on Maya

This was Maya, last Saturday, the day before she was let out:

When we brought Maya home Monday night, she could barely move.

I was up at 4 am, Tuesday morning with her.  I carried her outside to potty and sat in the living room with her, feeding her by hand.  Ben and I debated about whether to take it slow feeding her (like you would if you had the stomach bug) or to feed her as much as we could.  I chose to feed her as much as I could and it seemed to help.  I even made her scrambled eggs and gave her a couple of cans of tuna.  Yes, she's a tad bit spoiled.  All day Tuesday, I had to carry her everywhere and she slept a lot.  I gave her bath; she had dirt caked into her fur and had a couple of wounds on her paw that needed to be cleaned up.  I also covered her paws in ointment.

This is her walking Tuesday: 

She walked gingerly, with a limp and would just lay down when she was tried.

Wednesday she was trying to walk more and even would go up the stairs, but had to be carried down.

She was starting to look more like herself and her paws looked so much better!  She started to perk up and chew on her bone.

This is her walking on Wednesday (video courtesy of Alison):

By Thursday she was almost walking normal.  She still slept a ton, but was trying to play again.

One of the hardest things about this ordeal has been helping the kids understand what is going on.  They assume that Maya is home and everything is back to normal and want to jump on her and play with her.  They would try to get her to chase them or do tricks and would be so confused when she just laid there.

Saturday, she started going down the stairs again, but it's pretty obvious that it still hurts her.  She also attempted running and was wanting to play.  She had enough energy to dig up a sprinkler hose and chew off part of Eli's Minecraft book, so I'd say her puppiness is coming back.

We kind of joked that Maya came back a perfect puppy.  Obviously perfect puppies don't dig up sprinkler systems, but somehow, when she got back, all of the commands we were working on with her clicked.  The week before she was lost, she had several random "anxious" accidents in the house.  But when she came back, even when she could barely walk, she would hobble over to the back door and ring the bell to be let out.  It was the one time that I expected her to have an accident and somehow she would make it to the edge of the grass to potty.  She also miraculously got the command "drop it" and would easily give up anything we told her to drop.

I still have the image of finding her etched in my brain, but am so thankful to see her healing and most of all, am thankful that it happened last weekend and not this weekend when it's 120 and Ben's out of town!  This story would be far different if it were.