Category: Critters

One of the Georgia’s little known attractions is the Kangaroo Conservation Center near Dawsonville. They have about 200 kangaroos there. The primary purpose of the place is breeding kangaroos to supply zoos, but they run a decent tourist business as well. A tour is about 2 hours. Part of that time is inside and where they introduce you to the different kinds of kangaroos and wallabies they have. They just let them run around an enclosed area with you, but they typically don’t come real close. They are very gentle animals and look a lot like deer when they’re not hopping around.

They also showed off a kookaburra and a very tiny antelope called a dik-dik. Dik-diks are territorial and mark their territory by rubbing a gland under their eye on anything that sticks out like a limb. They told us to stick out our fingers and some of the dik-diks marked people’s fingers with a tarry little blotch (one marked Susan’s finger, but not mine). Here’s a picture I took later of a dik-dik being curious through the pen fence. Their noses are very flexible and they can bend them around easily. They are very, very cute and about the size of small dog.

Continue reading “Kangaroos”

Today marks 8 weeks since Katie’s surgery (see the update at 4 weeks). She seems about 95% recovered, barely limping and being pretty normal. But I know she can’t really run at full speed or jump as high as she usually does. I took her in this morning and the vet was very pleased with her x-rays. But there is still a pretty substantial gap on one side of the bone where new bone hasn’t filled in yet. That’s normal and he says that at this point there’s almost no chance that she could do anything to mess up the surgery, like pull out a screw or bend the plate.

That means I can start taking her on walks up to the full 2 miles over the next few weeks. After 8 more weeks she will have another follow-up visit and hopefully be given a clean bill of health to do regular Katie stuff.

Meanwhile, Lucy is staying with me for a week while her owners are on vacation. She’s a very cute little version of Katie with a *lot* of energy. Since she’s an only dog in her house she’s used to getting all the attention and toys and it doesn’t work that way in my house. Still she’s have a lot of fun and everyone is getting along well.

See the conclusion to this series.

This is a continuation of the original post

Katie is now half-way through her recuperation. The staples were taken out two weeks ago and the doctor seemed satisfied with the progress, but I still have to take it easy for the full eight weeks. They seemed a little disappointed that Katie had gotten a couple of staples out and the scar hadn’t grown together perfectly. In parts where the staples stayed put there’s just a little line, but other parts are still red even at 4 weeks. I would guess the scar is about 85% healed. She still licks it some. At least half the hair has grown back on her leg so she is at least all black again.

At eight weeks they will take x-rays and make sure the bone has grown back together and then we can start doing therapy by taking progressively longer walks.

Katie is doing pretty well. I haven’t been taking Clio for walks either so we are all suffering and getting stir crazy (and gaining weight in the case of me and Clio at least; Clio and I have gone to Stone Mountain with Susan and her dogs the last couple of weekends). Katie still doesn’t put much weight on the hurt leg, but doesn’t keep it raised off the ground either. She really wants to play but we can’t do anything physical.

See a follow-up entry.

I took Katie to the vet today for knee surgery. She had been limping some since after our first dog hike in November, but I thought she was just stiff or sore (like I was). When it didn’t go away I took her in to the vet. They gave her some anti-inflammatory steroids (I’d given her some Advil before) but it didn’t seem to do much good. When I scheduled a follow-up visit to take X-rays I wound up leaving her at the vet all day and they never got to her. Time for a new vet!

Continue reading “Katie’s Surgery”

Susan sent me some information about the Georgia Dog Hiking Club. They hike a trail near the dam at Lake Allatoona every Sunday morning.

From Creative Loafing:

http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2003-08-28/happs.html

The home page of the guy who runs it (with info towards the bottom of a very long web page; this guy didn’t appear to be there today):

http://home.aol.com/DrBatch/

So we tried it out. I sent an e-mail to the owners of Lucy (formerly Penny a.k.a. Little Katie) so we saw Lucy and Matt out there (I also saw Lucy with both Matt and Rachel last weekend at Stone Mountain for a hike). Today there were probably 20 dogs that came. It was funny seeing all the different dogs (many of them off their leashes which is just as well because you get tangled pretty quickly). Once we started everyone let their dogs off the leashes and pandemonium ensued, but the dogs all got along and our dogs didn’t go running off with the others at least.

The first part of the hike was almost straight up a mountainside. In fact it is like walking up the stairs of a 60-story building as you nearly double your elevation above sea level from 700 to 1350 feet at the top of Vineyard Mountain (according to this USGS map). Susan wasn’t feeling well at all (she thought she would have to turn back) so we got behind pretty quickly. We caught up or passed other people and their dogs and caught up with the main pack while they were playing in a part of the lake. The dogs thought this was the greatest thing ever. Then we got lost some more, came across some other people with dogs, and finally made it back to the car after 3 hours of hiking (everyone else was gone at this point). It’s definitely worth doing and was a lot of fun, but also a major workout. I’m going to need to borrow Jeb’s geiger counter next time so I can record the trail.