Roxy's recovery.

Well Roxy has had surgery on her broken leg and is doing great. I had to improvise a way to keep her away from the staples and incision. This is her new dress! Pretty, huh?? I basically took the sleeve of a sweatshirt and cut out holes for her legs. I had to make it long enough so she could not pull it up and get at the incision.

When I am with her, I can roll it up to give her a little more freedom when she's moving around.

Right now she is basically resting comfortably and getting spoiled as hell! She has made herself comfortable on Laurie's dog bed in my room! She spends her time sleeping on the bed and at regular intervals I roll up her dress, put her in a crate lined with papers, she does her business and poops and pees if she has to, then I roll her dress back down and she goes back to resting again.

She is being incredibly good and luckily staying quiet enough to let the leg heal quickly. It won't be long before she's back to normal I think! She's a lucky girl!

A Tragic Day for Belle

It is with a VERY heavy heart that I tell you that once again, Belle's babies were attacked and killed. I discovered it yesterday afternoon. This time all 3 kits were killed and Belle is pretty beat up. She obviously put up a good fight, but she's such a little girl and whatever it was got the better of her. I had to bring her in to keep an eye on her. Her eye is a little swollen, she's not using her right front leg and she's pretty scratched up. Nothing life threatening, but in no condition to be out there defenseless right now with her limited mobility.

I'm guessing a rogue male coon. The bodies were mutilated and left there. A fisher would take them with it. Although if Belle battled with it, maybe it didn't have a chance to take them. Who knows, either way I'm miserable! I'll never put a den box back up there...it's obviously not safe for moms to have their kits in and I don't want to invite future moms to use it. It's not right at the feeding station, but it's apparently close enough to attract unsavory company.

We also discovered Popeye with a nose injury. Looks like someone gave him a good bite and ripped the front of his nose apart. Poor guy. It looked awful, but he was brought to the vet and he stitched him up like new! It looks great and he should heal up well.

These are some pics of his ordeal. He was such a good boy at the vet also. He let everyone do their thing without a hassle.

We got to wondering if maybe whatever got Belle's babies may have paid a visit to the release cage and managed to get him through the cage. The release cage is chain link....easy enough for a nose to poke through and something to grab it. For now, the poor guy has his own suite at Hotel Raccoon and he seems to be enjoying his privacy! All the treats and attention don't seem to bother him either! haha

Day 5 after surgery.

Where's my egg mom?

Dandy is getting better every day. Here she pokes her head out to say hi when she realized I was in her pen cleaning up.

Awwww she looks so cute now....just like before the accident.....

....until she tilts her head up a little! ha ha! Poor girl is going to have a permanent scowl on her face, but I still think she's cute! Looks and feels a lot better than it did when I found her!

She will always be beautiful to me!!!

Dandy's Surgery

Today was the day of reckoning for Dandy. She had surgery on her very damaged and broken nose. It had pretty much been evulsed..the whole nose was forced up and back exposing the nasal cavity as you can see in this before picture. That is the actual position the nose was stuck in.

A big dead section of the nasal septum was removed. The right side damage was less than the left. Here the Dr. is stitching the nose back down over the nasal cavity, securing it to the gums to hold it down.

The left side was worse. Here you can see the nasal cavity still exposed. Where his finger is part of the jaw had chipped off, like a flake of ice, so there was no gum tissue to secure the nose to. He got creative and actually stitched the nose down with a mattress stitch down around and between the teeth (like flossing).

And finally after it all, she still has a permanent snarl, but much better! You can actually see her eyes with the snout pulled back into place!

We have to hope the stitches hold, and a lot of other things too! But the Dr. is optimistically hopeful. So now we wait and see, and hopefully with a lot of TLC she will pull through and be well enough to release back into the wild again. As long as everything works well, the deformity is not an issue. She was still eating and drinking perfectly well before the surgery which is a good sign as well.

I am ETERNALLY GRATEFUL to my vets for taking the time and putting the effort into helping her....words cannot describe! THANK YOU!