Hopper the broken greyhound

No, not a skiing injury!


I had a call at 3am from a guy, 'We've found a stray dog with a bent leg running around near the estate, what shall we do?'. Aaargh, give it some food and call the dog warden in the morning!


Anyway, they turned up with a very thin and neglected-looking greyhound pup the next day, with a neatly snapped distal radius and ulnar. After much hand-wringing and a little help from the RSPCA (£260!) the family decided to foot the rest of the bill for fixing 'Hopper's leg, as he was such a friendly fellow, and they only had about 7 dogs and countless cats already.


I gave Neil a hand with the surgery and thought I'd put some pics on the website. Total surgery cost : £750




Neil having a smoke while preparing the leg for surgery

I give Neil a few pointers as it's a bit of a tricky one

Maybe we've stretched the leg a bit?

Neatly pinned in place : External Fixator System means no cast or open surgery required

Fancy monitoring equipment; Heart rate, ECG, Blood Pressure, Blood Oxygenation, CO2 levels. I can't work any of it, horray for the nurses.

Hopper looking impressed w his new leg; he was jumping all over the cage within a few hours. Keeping him still will be the problem!

We will remove the pins a few at a time over the next few weeks to encourage the bone to take the weight again. Hopper will heal fine, especially as he seems like he's still quite young. He's just lucky he was dumped where he could be found by some very generous people.