Elbow Surgery

I just got approval from Workman's Comp to have surgery on my Left Elbow for the Tendinitis I have. I should have had the surgery months ago, but my Workman's comp Case Worker was an idiot. So after 3 Doctors  and waiting since January, I am finally waiting for the Doctors office to call to schedule my surgery.

I am hoping the surgery is soon as I have a week vacation the first week of July and we are supposed to go stay at a friends cabin and go swimming and fishing, and I want to take Megan to a couple of water parks. So I need my arm to be working by then.

So what they are going to do is make a 2 inch incision on the outside of my left elbow and go in and repair the tendon. The surgery last 45 minutes. They say it has a 96% success rate. Only 5% of the people that get Lateral Epicondilitis aka tennis elbow, ever go on to have surgery. When I had my MRI back in December it said that I have severe tennis elbow. 
So since Therapy, meds, and light duty didn't work, this better.

So after surgery my elbow will be in a sling for 10 days. That means I can not do anything with my elbow at all.
This means I can not straighten my hair because I can not hold the blow dryer or my round brush with my left arm.
So I will be going curly for a while.

Then I go to physical therapy after 4 weeks. I am not sure what I will be allowed to do between the 10days in the sling and the 4 weeks before I can do therapy. I guess I will just have to find out. However I figure if I can get into surgery in the next 2 weeks I should be pretty well along by the time I go on vacation.

So I should have a phone call Monday to schedule my surgery. 

New Foster Dog from Texas Puppy Mill

I am sorry I haven't posted in a while, I have a new blog for my furniture creations and I spend a lot of time there and doing my furniture these days this is my new blog and where I spend all my time.

We got a new Foster dog like a week ago this last Friday. He came from a HORRIBLE Puppy Mill in Texas. He was one of 200 dogs kept in unspeakable conditions. My foster dog Finley was kept like this

I can't hardly look at this picture. One, it makes me so mad and dad at the same time and I want to do something bad to the man that put Finley here. Two, I can't stand the sad look on Finley's face because this is how I know him now.

This is how I know him because he loves to get petted. When we first got him he had no idea what it was like to be be petted, and now he follows me around the house trying to get as many pets as possible.
This little guy came to us with no teeth and we think he is about 4 yrs old. It is hard to judge a dogs age when they have no teeth. He has some back teeth, but his K-9 teeth have be ground down so that when he was used to breed he could not hurt the dog he was breeding with. However his front top and bottom teeth are all missing completely and they think it could have been from poor nutrition. I am hoping the guy that had him didn't pull them or anything because the thought of that kills me.
This poor guy as you can see from the above picture was kept in a raised cage and was left outside 24 hours a day in any kind of weather condition you can imagine for Texas. The holes in the cage were so large I guess the guy thought he was doing Finley a favor and put in 2 wire doors from dog crates so Finley could walk on them. As you can imagine Finley's paws are damaged from this cage. His paws are all spread out from having to stand and walk on the wires.
We have heard stories that possibly in the last couple months that the dogs were in Texas they were being fed only once a week. As you can see in Finley's cage he has 2 rusted coffee cans I would assume be for food and then one coffee can I would assume was for water. He also came to use with Girardia. Which is a parasite. They think from him drinking bad water.
Arizona Border Collie Rescue was contacted by the Texas Humane Society to see if we could take some of the dogs and we ended up bringing 21 dogs here and there are 3 or 4 more coming.
You can see video of these dogs at the Texas Ranch on youtube if you search "Texas puppy mill, 4-02-11."
It requires a strong stomach to watch the video.

We are so happy to have Finley and introduce him to a lot of first. He had never been in a real house. Never had a belly rub. Never used a dog door.
When we first got him it was a real struggle just to get him to come inside our house much less get him to stay inside the house. Last night was very special because it was the first time he slept all night in the house.
We got him fixed last Friday because the poor guy wanted to spray the entire inside of my house. He had never been told the word no, so when you would tell him no when he heisted his leg to spray he wouldn't even act like he heard you , because the word meant absolutely nothing to him.
Thankfully he is fixed now and hasn't tried to spray the inside of my house except for once since he was fixed.

Finley is just about a perfect dog. He doesn't mind other dogs at all, and especially loves to play with our other BC Mardi. They have a blast together.
I didn't think Finley would even know what a toy was, but he found some in our backyard and LOVES to play with toys.
He loves cheese. I buy string cheese and pull strands of it to give him and it is his favorite treat above all else.
He loves to jump on our bed and roll around on his back.

I guess he is doing better than all but one of the other 20 dogs they brought to Arizona from Texas. Some of the dogs still aren't letting people pet them hardly at all. Some of the dogs are still almost paralyzed in fear. They are Ferrel, they just don't know what it means to live in houses and to have people that want to pet and buy stuff for.

All I know is that when Finley finally does go up for adoption it is going to take a VERY SPECIAL person to come to our house before we will let this dog go.

After sleeping in the house for the first time all night, now he tried to sleep between us in our bed, but he didn't want to sleep. He kept poking us with his nose so we would pet him and then he would not lay down and go to sleep, and we tried to get him to for 30 minutes. So reluctantly we had to have him leave our bed.

We have foster several dogs for AZBCR and Finley has come around faster than some of the fearful dogs we had gotten from shelters that had used to been peoples pets. This poor dog was never anyones pet he was solely there to make this horrible man money.

I love this dog and I am so happy that there were people in Texas willing to save all 180 dogs lives that were at the puppy mill. I am also happy that Arizona Border Collie Rescue was able to help 24 dogs and bring them to Arizona to start a new life and be treated the way any dog should be treated. I would have been happy with any dog that they handed us from this puppy mill, but I am sure happy it just so happen it was Finley.

I make this promise to you Finley. I will do everything in my power to find you the best home possible AND also if who ever takes you decides they can't keep you they can always bring you back to our home forever and enternity we will take you back.