Making Lemonade

This morning was the appointment with the orthopedic specialist Dr. Hay.  He looked at Basil's x-rays and then did an exam of him on the floor.  Basil was quiet and stood quite still letting Dr. Hay check him all over.  

So from Dr. Hay's experience he feels it is the beginnings of a tear of his right knee ligament.  He said it might even be so small it is microscopic but he could feel swelling and with the symptoms Basil has, he is pretty sure it is a knee issue.  He says corgis are lucky in that they are quite muscular so it helps to hold the knee properly in place and not let it luxate too much.  Basil in particular is in good shape and Dr. Hay loved his disposition saying how sweet and calm he was and that most corgis are quite feisty and don't like him to examine them.

While the tear is small, this is a career ending injury.  The ligament will tear completely in the future at some point and doing agility will put too much stress on it.  So for now, we want to prevent that ligament from tearing as long as possible.  

I'm sad that I won't be able to train or compete in agility with Basil anymore.  He does have a lot of fun doing it and I love doing it with him.  Hopefully he will be just as happy playing with Bernie and Byron at home.  Dr. Hay recommended I swim him as much as possible to help keep his muscle tone so I'll be doing that a lot over the summer.  He loves to swim and fetch his toys in the water so that should be fun for us. I may bring him to a trial to do a fun Tunnelers course every so often since that doesn't require any jumping at all.

And now Byron will really start getting some agility training in!  That should be fun.  He is such a confident little big puppy.  He is quite heavy now.  I can't pick him up with one arm anymore because of how heavy and long he is.