Disappointment

Any time my sister and I were whining or complaining about something, my father's comeback was, "You're old enough to where your wants won't hurt you." I'm not really sure what age he was referring to. Yesterday, I realized I haven't hit that age yet.

I couldn't have been more excited about our coursing weekend. I wanted to see Seka chase the plastic bunnies. I wanted to have her certified this weekend. I wanted to have Kevin see her run in person. I wanted to hang out with my new coursing friends. I wanted to learn more about my new obsession. I had the car all loaded. I had a new tackle box full of coursing gear, special K9 Gatorade, a new mat for the ex-pen, tarps and clips for the tent - you name it, we were ready.

Before loading the girls in the car for our two hour trip north to the coursing site, we decided to let Seka and Roxy run in the backyard for a few minutes to get the last minute wiggles out. And that's when our weekend of fun and chasing the plastic bunnies went to the wayside. While chasing her ball less than 50 feet from me, Seka dislocated her back outside toe on her good foot.

Now, many a greyhound has dislocated a toe. It's not usually an earth shattering injury. In fact, Seka did this a few days ago while playing in the backyard. I went over when it happened the first time, thinking she had a sticker in her foot, and simply popped it back into place just like you would pop one of your fingers. She went back to running without a whimper. This time, after I put it back in place, she was in pain and the joint started swelling immediately. So, off to the vet we went for an hour wait, an awesome pain shot (for Seka, unfortunately, not me - see photo), an x-ray, and the best diagnosis we could hope for - it was back in place, no tare, not broken, just really strained. We went home with some pain meds (again, for her - not me) and the instructions of no running for two weeks and staying off of it as much as possible for the next few days.

So our evening involved helping weeble wobble Seka get around the house, canceling hotel reservations, canceling dinner plans with coursing friends and being all-around bummed at the whole darn situation. The good news is, she'll have plenty of time to heal since the coursing season doesn't really pick up until the fall. There won't be a chance for her to run until September. So, we'll take this slowly since now the possibility of that toe popping out is greater than it was before. I guess I should be grateful that this happened here and not on the coursing field so she could be made comfortable quickly and it wasn't a bad injury.

Author Jim Fiebig once said, “Age does not diminish the extreme disappointment of having a scoop of ice cream fall from the cone.” This kinda feels like my double-decker scoop of chocolate chocolate chip with jimmies on top just hit the ground and they just ran out of that flavor when I went back to get more.