Stanley (Max 11-388) [1]

Sponsored by:

Judith Cummings

Sandra Lynn
"In honor of my RAGOM kids Bender and Tilly"

 Wishing you a speedy recovery and a Merry Christmas! From Mini-doodle Ruby

 Merry Christmas! From Kelly

 From the Brad K family and their doodle, Bailey

 With Love from Will, age 5 and Ali, age 9

November 13, 2011

Hi everyone! My name is Max, a 5 month old Goldendoodle, and I am new to the RAGOM family as of November 8th. My loving family made the incredibly difficult and emotional decision to surrender me to RAGOM so I could get the needed medical attention for my broken elbow. Thank you for loving me enough to do this for me!

According to my vet records, on October 20th, I got into an accident with a lawn mower. They surrendered me Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, the AWESOME Dr. R at Inver Grove Heights Animal Hospital performed surgery on me. I have a "Salter-2 Distal humeral supracondylar fracture with marked fibrosis and calculus with proximal medial displacement". Wow that's a mouthful! Dr R outfitted me with an external fixator to help keep everything in place while the fractures heal.

Here is a picture of the external fixator. It looks like a big dog bone chew toy that I carry with me. Hmm, maybe I could market that idea...a little velcro, a little crazy glue...

Anyway, I will be sporting the fixator for the next 6 weeks. I am unable to walk on that leg right now so I am doing my best impression of being a tripod and hopping on 3 legs while FM has a towel under my leg and chest for assistance. I am actually quite good at it too! Here is how I drag my bum leg.

The routine for my recovery has me spending practically all of my time in a crate except for potty breaks and snuggle time with FM on a dog bed when my foster-sisters are outside. I haven't been able to properly meet my foster-sisters except through the crate because I can't risk getting excited and bouncing on my leg. But I can tell I am going to love them when I do finally get to play with them. My foster-sisters are doodles too, so I fit in perfectly here.

Personality-wise, FM says I am absolutely a sweetheart! (I knew that...ha, ha!) I love crawling in FM's lap and giving tons of kisses. Literally, tons! I never stop and my tail does not stop wagging either. This injury and recovery will not dampen my spirit, that I can guarantee. My coat is incredibly soft and wavy. I'm a big mop of hair.

I do not resource guard toys or food. Show me some food and my tail goes into super-sonic mode and I Hoover-Vacuum my food. I am very skinny and need to put some meat on my ribs, so I am getting 5-6 cups of good food throughout the day. And without being able to tear around the yard, I won't be burning as many calories. I lived as an only dog and had a 1 1/2 year old human in my house. FM has only seen pure sweetness in me and I desperately want to play with my foster-sisters, so she thinks I will be great in any household. FM does not know about cats or if I have a prey drive, and will not be able to find that out for quite a long time.

I won't be available for adoption until the fractures do some good healing. I still have to have "snip-snip" surgery, so that may happen at the same time as getting my fixator removed, hopefully just before Christmas. I will be doing some physical therapy exercises with my leg starting the second week here and will have to be on leash-restricted activity and PT for a few weeks after the fixator is removed to make sure I build back up at a steady pace. With my energy and personality, if I was let off leash, I'd be zooming all over the place!! That would not be good as I would wreck all of this expensive medical treatment.

Speaking of expensive, have you heard about "Give To The Max Day" at GiveMN.org this week on Wednesday Nov 16th? I bet you are thinking they named that for me. Nope! However, if you would like to "Give To This Max" to help defray my medical costs, I would be forever grateful and would send sloppy kisses your way! There is more info on RAGOM's homepage if you are interested in helping me or any of the other outstanding goldens in RAGOM's care. Also, if you could click on the Kare 11 Challenge on the homepage to help us potentially win money for all of the GReat dogs here, I would appreciate that too. Vote Everyday! Takes literally 15 seconds to do. That Challenge also ends on Wednesday.

A very special "Thank You" to Devon TT for coming over to take pictures of me yesterday and to Amy L. for handling me during the photo shoot while FM was trying to get me to focus. I have many ants-in-my-puppy-pants so to speak and have a really hard time sitting still. FM just could not get any pictures of me by herself as I have to instantly get in her face. (Sorry about the noses smudges on your camera lens Devon.)

Thanks for ready my long post. I will keep you updated on my progress in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

Very, very, very, very affectionately yours,

Max