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Brought to Her Knees--Temporarily

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It has always been the delight of Peaches, my mixed-breed companion who is half Maltese terrier and half poodle, to jump from chair to couch to hassock and back, the feathers on her legs and her tail fluttering like pennants on tournament day.

Now, her exuberance and pure delight in being has brought her to grief, which seems like a grumpy stroke of fate.

This unkind consequence came to light the other evening when she jumped off the bed and let out a scream like the noon whistle down at the foundry. She continued this high-pitched wail in spite of my soothings. At length, she quieted down, but it was plain that all was not well.

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The next day, we went to the vet. Dr. Susan Dietrich is a small young woman, dynamic and reassuring. She told me that she would be off for a couple of weeks for orthoscopic knee surgery because of an overexuberant slide into second base in a softball game.

Inasmuch as I still gimp along on my prefabricated knee (I did not destroy my knee by jumping from one piece of furniture to another, but by dancing in the theater), I couldn’t help thinking that Peaches was in iffy company for a small dog with a bad knee. No one in the room had a full set of working joints.

Dr. Dietrich took Peaches away to the innermost passages, from whence I could hear her anguished cries. When Dr. Dietrich returned, she said that flexing Peaches’ knee revealed that she had turned the ligament in her left knee to wet breakfast food. That is exactly what I had done to mine.

Dr. Dietrich said: “This is something that happens to small dogs and small people. They overextend themselves.”

Dr. Dietrich herself is no bigger than a tuppenny bit and I have never been called stately. Peaches is about 12 inches from toe-tip to the crown of her head. So there we three stood with our hurting knees and our short stature.

Dr. Dietrich said that Peaches would have to have surgery on her left knee, just as I had.

Since then, Dr. Dietrich has had her surgery, which was highly successful and I have talked to Dr. Woody Walker, who says that they will make Peaches a new ligament from the layer of muscle along her thigh and that in four to six weeks she will be able to put her weight on that leg, which she can’t do now. It is scheduled Monday. We had to wait until two veterinary surgeons were available to do this operation on this tiny dog.

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She is three-legging it around the house and yard at a good clip. Dr. Warren says animals are good patients and they work out their own therapy.

I should really have my right knee replaced because it is the one that hurts. I was thinking of mentioning it to Dr. Diehl but every time I get close to it, my right knee is miraculously free of pain.

Peaches, in the meantime, is taking people pills for the pain or else I’m taking her pills. In any case, we are on the same medication.

We are both in excellent hands for our knees. I don’t think my attitude is as good as that of the small blond dog.

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