A Stressful Week

As many of you have read... we welcomed little miss Ellie into our family on Monday. Oh my gosh! I LOVE her!!! This poor girl, however, is continuing to go through some rough patches even though she has a home now. What happened??
 On Tuesday, we took her to the vet to get her official surgery to fix up her leg. It went great and our vet is awesome! It was nowhere near what we thought it would cost to get her fixed. We brought her home and she was happy as can be

This picture is poor quality but it's adorable :)

Within a few hours, little miss somehow slipped out of her cast and broke her leg again. I honestly have no idea how it happened because she was sleeping right next to me the entire time. So we splint it up to get through the night and back to the vet she went for another surgery on Wednesday morning. This is where the problems began.

The second surgery took longer than usual and I was so worried about her! Rather than the hour- hour and a half the first one took, it was 3-4 hours before we heard back. Her breathing was really unusual so the vet's kept her longer

This is when we picked her up... she wasn't very happy.

When I got home from work, Ellie was home with Dan and she was coughing and gagging every few minutes and then she would throw up. It was the saddest thing ever! To make matters worse, it hurts her even worse because of her torn stomach muscles.We finally came to the conclusion the she had come down with Kennel Cough. It's pretty common in dogs especially ones that were in shelters around other dogs, which in Ellie's case- she was. 

Rather than normal symptoms of Kennel Cough, where dogs still have a good appetite and are still eating, drinking, playing, and acting normal- Ellie was the absolute opposite. She would not eat, drink, or play with us. The first day she was so crazy and we wanted nothing more than for her to rest and chill out and then we did a 180 and were trying to do everything we could to wake her up and play with us..but she wasn't having it. Finally, I hit my breaking point after seeing her in so much pain. I loaded her up in her basket, threw her in the car and went to the vet. I don't know what came over me but the moment I stepped in I just started crying. The vet thinks I'm a basket case now. Great....

He looked her over and knew she didn't have Kennel Cough. This is what happened to her:

When she went in for surgery, she had already eaten and they are not supposed to eat within 8 hours of being put under but given it was an emergency surgery since they had to get her leg put back together they put her under anyways. During the process of the surgery Ellie aspirated and they had to hurry and flush her system causing everything to swell up including her mouth, throat, and stomach. She has the same symptoms of Kennel Cough but its not. 

This is her "car seat". We put her in it because it hurts her ribs too much to hold her in the car so she sleeps in the basket when we drive.

Brandy was jealous...

She hasn't shown too many signs of progress getting better but I'm happy to report she finally ate some food tonight (which she hasn't in 3 days) and drank a ton of water and pedialite. We got her steam ventilator to help her breath better so she doesn't have as many coughing spells and she loves it. 

This is her sleeping in front of her ventilator.

That's the Rackliff's eventful week. I'm really hoping little miss starts feeling better soon!