Every time I hunt with Indie I’m amazed with her endurance and toughness. She’ll run all day long, sometimes more than 25 miles, through tall grass, up and down hills, through creeks and marshes, in hot and cold weather, barefoot in ice and snow, and she’d do it every day if I would. She’s also had two significant cuts from barbwire fences, both of which would have sent me in for a tetanus shot and stitches, but they didn’t slow her down even for a moment. She’s tough as nails, she’s active, she’s an athlete in the prime of her career, and her pain tolerance is at a level that I can’t even fathom. And while all of these traits make her a wonderful and dependable companion in the uplands, for the next 50 days they’ll work against her as I depress and then gradually increase her post-knee surgery activity levels.
What you can see in the picture above is a shaved leg, a six-inch incision and eleven stitches. What you can’t see is a hole drilled into her bone, a length of heavy nylon string, a metal clasp and some sutures connecting the string to tissue above her knee. While we get to remove the stitches in a week, it’ll be another five to six weeks after that before she’s cleared to be fully active again. It’s been a week and now that the pain in her knee is starting to subside, she’s made it clear to us that she’s tired of laying around.
It’ll be an interesting next few weeks around our house. And despite how bad we might want to forget, I’m sure we’ll always remember Indie’s road to recovery.