A Winter Boat Ride

Our poor little injured patient

Mr. Cone Head

Rob-ert the sailor man -toot toot!


A little chilly at Friday Harbor

Me stuffing a doughnut in my face and trying to look innocent.

Two weekends ago we took a quick trip up to the San Juans to spend a few nights on the boat with Robert's parents. Robert is going to be taking sailing classes this Spring, and is getting really excited about it, so he's been anxious to be on the water. We had a really fun time and nice weather, but we did have one rather significant mishap the first morning...

Robert woke up around 7 and since I wanted to keep sleeping he decided to take Kai for a nice long walk around the point (we were still docked at the harbor and hadn't left Anacortes yet). I had drifted back to sleep but was violently awakened some time later by Robert flinging the cabin door open and yelling "We've got to go; Kai's been hurt". Now I'm not usually one to jump out of bed, but hearing those words made me panic so I flew out of bed, threw on my shoes, and went running down the docks after Robert in my pajamas. Unfortunately for me (not a runner), our boat was moored at the farthest end possible, so I had to run farther than I've ran in years and man were my lungs burning (time to get in shape maybe?!) Robert had put Kai in the back of my car and the only reason he had run back to the boat was to get his cell phone so he could call and try to find an animal hospital (how come we never have our cell phones when in an actual emergency?)

We drove to the first clinic and when we got there I saw poor Kai's wound for the first time. He had been so excited on his walk that he was jumping around and got tangled in a bush with pointy branches and somehow completely ripped a huge portion of skin from his leg. The skin had flapped open to reveal a nearly perfect 6 inch by 4 inch square of his thigh. It was like peering into a window of muscle and veins. The lady who greeted us was not very friendly and seemed rather unmoved by Kai's injury. She said the doctor would probably see all of his other patients first and then get to Kai. As if we would let our poor little bloody doggie sit in a kennel all day waiting to see the doctor! I thanked her rather curtly and we headed to the Animal Emergency Clinic. When we arrived there, they put us in a room right away and said they would have to knock Kai out and sew him up. We left him there trembling and whining and headed back to the boat to wait for their call.

At about 1:00 that afternoon they said his surgery had gone well and that we could come get our big guy. He got quite a few stitches and they had to stick a big drain in his leg. The worst part, however, was the huge plastic cone he had to wear around his head for 2 weeks. You would think he would have eventually figured out to allow for more space when moving around, but he kept crashing into things and ramming through things for the entire 14 days. He wasn't supposed to move around very much either, so getting him down the very long dock and onto the boat was quite a chore. We decided to stick him in one of the luggage carts and wheel him back to the boat, and although normally he probably wouldn't have stayed put, he was so sore and drugged that he just layed their and enjoyed the ride.

He has since got his stitches out and is doing much better, but it will probably take awhile for all of his fur to grow back! And aside from that little (costly) episode... the rest of the trip was a blast:)