Doggie Liveblogging

Everybody’s invited to peek in on our pups while we’re away in Europe. They’re staying at the Woodland Veterinary Hospital (and kennel, natch). Go here. The user ID is wvh4, the password is 4. Presto! Live doggies!

Alaska (the white shepherd mix) has a long history with the Woodland Veterinary Hospital (which is why I drove 90 minutes to board the dogs there instead of choosing someplace closer to home). As a pup, he was found by the side of the road with a shattered rear hip and broken front leg. Some Samaritan brought him in to Woodland Vet, where Dr. Dennie performed pro bono surgery on the poor little guy, removing the ball joint in his rear leg. They named him Klondike, and he then lived at the hospital as a companion to one of their blood-donor dogs while he healed up. Eventually they had to put him up for adoption at the pound. It soon became painfully obvious that nobody wanted to adopt a lame dog. He had a few reprieves, and Dr. Dennie went to the trouble of posting one of his staff at the pound as a ringer specifically to adopt Klondike the instant he was put on the euthanasia list. After his fourth month at the pound, I saw a picture of him in an old copy of the Davis Enterprise, called the pound and was astonished he was still there. About a week later he came home with me, and my daughter named him Alaska. (Later she picked out his sister Kaya, but that’s another story.) A few months of cautious exercise, and he was running without any trouble from the rear leg. Apparently, muscle fills in the space where the ball joint was. Sure wish humans could heal like that!

Alaska came into our lives almost seven years ago now. Few staff at the Hospital are left who remember him as the “legendary” Klondike, but even so we’ve continued giving them our business even after we moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. They’re simply the best vets around.