::A Geek in Korea::

Yesterday, while walking Yoshi outside on our usual route around the apartment, he stopped following me. He sat down and started gnawing on one of his paws. When I tried to urge him onward, he wouldn’t budge. This wasn’t one of his "lazy" or "too hot" sorts of "protests" he tries from time to time. He hadn’t fallen, gotten hit, or stepped on anything unusual. Nothing would have caused him to stop or any particular reason. He seemed to be uncomfortable for some reason. I had to carry him the rest of the way back to the apartment.

When I got him back to the apartment, he was treating one of his hind legs gingerly. That wasn’t an encouraging sign. We needed to leave for work in an hour, and we had a possibly injured dog. No time to go to the vet and still get to work on time. We decided that since one of my wife’s coworkers brings a pet to work, bringing Yoshi and leaving him supervised in the office would be the best thing we could do. We called ahead for permission, and packed his travel bag. My wife took the subway, even though it’s not technically pet friendly. She kept Yoshi in the bag, and the people around her mistook him for a cute doll. He’s very well behaved in his travel bag, so we are lucky.

At work, she said Yoshi was scared to be in a new place, but was as friendly as ever. He spent time in the office while my wife worked. The other teachers are all pet friendly, so no one cared. After work, and another trip on the subway, she dropped the dog off at the vet for overnight observation. He was till walking gingerly on his hind leg, and we were worried about broken bones.

The vet examined him and concluded nothing was broken. The hip, the knee, or ankle might be injured. According to our vet, if this injury becomes serious enough to need surgery, it might cost somewhere in the range of one million won to fix (Approximately 1,000 USD) Ouch.

Yoshi stayed at the vet for the night, which was the first time, barring vacation to the United States, where we were away from the dog overnight. Our house seemed quiet and empty. A lot of our time is spent petting, playing, and talking about our dog. A constant source of entertainment was gone, and possibly seriously injured. The mood was rather sour last night in the house as we looked at our new cage and thought about our missing dog as we went to bed.

This morning we got the call from the vet. Yoshi had nothing broken, and appeared to be walking well again. The vet told us it was likely that his hip or leg could act up again, but for the moment Yoshi seems to be doing fine. To prove how much he’s recovered from yesterday’s nightmare, we actually walked from the vet back home with the dog. It took almost an hour, after stopping for some water breaks, but Yoshi was struggling to go on faster and farther the entire time.

After looking up hip and leg injuries that sound similar, we’ll try to limit Yoshi’s jumping and will help him off furniture or chairs when he’s on our laps. This usually affects older dogs with arthritis, but who knows what caused such a problem with a pup a few months old. We’ll watch him for a few months to make sure he’s recovered fully.  It’s good to have him back in the house. We haven’t let him out of our sights for the entire time, and he’s been in our laps or getting attention all the time.

Here I am, all sappy and worried about my dog’s health. I’ve grown rather attached to the little guy.