Kadie loses a leg, but is missing nothing at all!

Kadie is very special to me. My husband and I are not able to have kids so when Kadie joined our family, she became our girl.

In January of 2004 I let Kadie to go outside to do her business. We live out in country and on a gravel road so we would often let her run free.

About five minutes later, I called her in. She went to her pillow and lay down. This was a bit unusual and I kneeled down to pet her.

First, I noticed a spot of blood on the pillow. Then I saw where it was coming from -- her leg was almost completely severed, barely dangling by a thread.

My initial reaction was the wrong one; I freaked out.

Quickly, though, I composed myself and dialed the vet. He agreed to see her immediately and sped into town.

The vet was not optimistic. The leg was broken so badly that he wasn't sure he could save it. He was reluctant to put a cast on the leg because the bone had pierced the skin and this could cause complications. They kept Kadie over night. The next morning, the situation had improved. The vet was able to put a cast on and gave us antibiotics to stop any infection.

Ten days later, we took the cast off to find that the bone was not healing well. We tried calcium in the hopes that the bone would regenerate, without success. Over the next several months we changed the cast five times. Kadie, normally hyper and full of joy and life spent most of her day laying around and crying. It brought tears to our eyes, too. We had to hold her to get her to go to sleep.

It used to annoy us that Kadie would run around the house barking whenever we went out. Now, we desperately missed it.

The last time we changed the cast, her toenails were bleeding and the pads of her foot were coming off. It was horrifying to watch and I finally came to terms with the fact that she was going to lose a leg. Sadly, the vet agreed.

A part of me was filled with the terrible picture of my poor cripple Kadie, limping around the house in pain and humiliation. But my fears turned out to be completely unfounded.

A day after the surgery, we brought home a joyful, healthy, jumping Kadie. She did have a few problems with pulled muscles in the front leg if she was too active, but even that didn't last long.

It's almost a year later and our lovely Kadie she is back to her normal self. As I write this she is terrorizing her friends, the kitties around, playing and barking at anything and every thing.

Through all of this, Kadie and I have become much closer. There's a loving bond that becomes so much stronger through a crisis like this. She is my baby and I would not trade her for the world.

- Kadie's Mom

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