Things have been pretty busy here lately -- I'm lucky if I have time to check e-mail each day. We also had a bit of an accident last week that has kept the mood around the house a little sad...

Last Saturday (the 11th) I took the dogs out to Chatfield State Park to play in the large dog park. Once we were inside the park on the access road, apparently Lucy climbed up on the arm rest on the door with her back legs and squeezed her body through the window opening, which was only really open far enough for her head to stick out -- or so I thought. She lost her balance and fell out of the window on to the roadway. Luckly, I was only driving about 25 MPH or this would be a very sad story.

Lucy had some road rash on her head, nose and front right leg, but no apparent fractures. It's difficult to tell with puppies since their growth plates in their bones don't fuse together until 10 months of age or so, but a comparison to her other front leg didn't show any fractures. When I first stopped the car and ran up to her, although I knew an injured animal might bite me I still reached out to touch her head and comfort her. She bit the crap out of my hand and then realized who I was. She was in shock when I carried her back to the car and drove her to the emergency pet hospital.

Once the vets looked her over they told me there were no fractures but she appeared to have damaged the nerve bundle in the "arm pit" of her right leg. This nerve bundle controls motor function in the leg, and the reason she wasn't putting any weight on the front right paw was because she could not feel it. With nerve damage, there's not a good way to tell how extensive it is and they couldn't tell me if the feeling would come back at all. In fact, they advised me that in many cases the nerves are so badly damaged that they recommend amputation of the leg, since it is just limp and is dragged around. If the limp leg was injured she wouldn't even know it, and at the very least it would atrophy from lack of use.

Clearly, I needed a second opinion on this, so I took Lucy to her vet on the following Monday. The vet seemed to concur with the emergency vets' diagnosis, but she wanted to wait quite a while before we make a decision about amputation.

In the meantime, Lucy doesn't really act hurt at all. She does hop around on three legs, but I have seen real improvement in her leg and she even started reacting to pinches on the "dead" paw. We went back to the vet today and she was happy with Lucy's progress, too, but said she had consulted with a neurologist who said that in most cases if the dog cannot support her weight on the injured leg it would never be useful to her. That's our next milestone, then: to work with Lucy until she can stand with her weight on the front right leg and her rear legs. The vet wants to wait at least a month before we make any other decisions.

It snowed about 6 inches here this morning once the storm was done. That's really about a perfect amount of snow: enough to mess up traffic but not too much (or too cold outside) to enjoy it. I didn't even mind shoveling the sidewalk, and Fabi enjoyed running back and forth through all my neighbors' yards and diving down every so often to get a big mouthful.

Only my dog could snoop around and find old tumbleweeds to play with during the snowfall!

The Denver Police have a local reputation for shooting first and asking questions later/never, so I'm not surprised to see the following story of an ABC reporter/producer being shoved into traffic, then arrested via the always-popular choke hold:

ABC Reporter Arrested

I've had a few run-ins with the DPD myself (but I have never been arrested) and have to say that the behavior they exhibit here is not out of the norm. It's their city and we're lucky they can't shoot you for holding a Diet Coke -- oh, wait... apparently they can.

This Fox News “reporter” thinks that the freedom of speech requires the protesters to agree to be interviewed by him. Since they won't say anything he can use as a sound bite, he starts admonishing them. I think he calls the protesters “thugs” at the beginning of the package. “Fair and balanced,” indeed.

The beauty of YouTube is that I don't actually have to tune FNC on my television and give them any extra advertising revenue.

How does FNC know the protesters are "leftists?" What is their source for this tag?

And seriously? “Griffin Jenkins?” Were all of the cool reporters' names taken already?

The Chinese were bragging about their cloud-seeding technology that was supposed to prevent rain during the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, but Denver has them beat! The DNC starts tomorrow, and to prevent weather from distracting the media, we had a couple of preemptive tornados around the metroplex tonight. Or was it Focus on The Family practicing their rain prayers for Thursday's spectacle?