Norman's Accident!

Norman had a horrible accident on Sunday evening! We were coming home with him in the car, only about 200 yards from our house when Norman fell out one of the back windows of our SUV! Like all dogs, he loves to put his head and paws out the window to feel the wind while we drive. He ended up sticking the front half of his body out too far, lost his center of gravity, and tumbled out onto the pavement. Luckily, we were slowing to a stop, so were only going about 15-20 mph. He let out horrible yelps and cries, and we found him crumpled in a ball with his leg curled up and blood on him and on the ground. It was awful and we were both freaking out!

Long story short, we rushed him to an awesome 24-hour animal hospital a few miles away where they x-ray'd him and confirmed that he broke his back right leg. It was a bad break in 3 places, and they warned us that sometimes the breaks can't be repaired and dogs have to loose the limb. Well, that sure didn't settle well AT ALL with us.... Joel had flashbacks of the accidents he went through with the various Fiji labs in college, including an amputation on one of them. We had to leave our poor baby at the hospital and spent a sleepless night back home worrying and praying. The orthopedic surgeon saw him the next morning, called us, and explained that the breaks should be able to be corrected without much difficulty in surgery. WHEW! The surgery happened later Monday afternoon, and he came out just fine from it. They installed some "hardware" in our little guy, so he's now our bionic puppy with screws and plates in his leg! They kept him another night for monitoring, and we got to bring him home on Tuesday afternoon.

Check out some pretty pathetic pictures of our little patient. Will update more on the progress of his recovery and our attempts to keep him off his leg as much as possible.


This was poor little Norman when we picked him up from the hospital earlier tonight. The nurses and vets at the Hope Clinic in Vienna were awesome and took such great care of him. It is an incredible facility and we felt very blessed that Norm got such great care.


This is a close up of the leg all bandaged up. Although it looks like a hard cast, it's actually soft and just wrapped with colored gauze (which happens to be in Boomer Sooner red, which is Norm's favorite color!)


Norm looks pretty tragic and can't quite get comfortable in any position.

He can bear some weight on it and hobbles around. It's kinda looks like he's on point in ballet.

Laurie and little Alex came over to pay him a visit and welcome him home. That really cheered him up. No visits from Cooper just yet, since Norm can't get too excited.

Daddy really makes him feel better.