Making some Blog Changes

So I have decided to make this blog private, so for those of you that want to continue reading my blog will have to email me so I can put you on the list. Also I am changing the blog address to dmbullock.blogspot.com. Just wanted to give you all a heads up. I'll probably change it this week sometime. Thanks!

New Puppy!

I finally gave in! I couldn't say no to this face.

This is Kayto. He's a 6 week old red Doberman Pinscher. Malone has been begging for a doberman for months. We found this little guy and I just couldn't say no. The idea of going through the whole "puppy" stage probably scared me off the most about adopting him. But, eventually it'll be worth it when he's grown. He'll be about 60-70lbs full grown. We're adopting him a little young, but it'll be worth it when he's really socialized with people and pets. With our other dog, Altivo, we missed that "social" window because we adopted him at about 16 weeks. That's why he's so shy around people. Hopefully we'll do better with this one. So far his favorite things to do are pee, poop, cry, sleep, and chew on things. But him and Altivo get along pretty well. They're actually about the same size right now, which is funny. They wear each other out alot, which is good. We're working on house training, which is hard when Malone and I work all day. But we're happy with him and we're excited to see him grow.

ACL Surgery

These last few weeks have proved to be quite exhausting! Malone finally had his surgery on his knee May 3. Back in December Malone tore his ACL snowmobiling. This surgery was an ACL reconstruction surgery. The surgery was done at an outpatient surgical center in Rexburg and took about 2 hours. The surgeon used two tendons from his hamstring to reconstruct his ACL. Turns out, once the Dr. got in there, he found a tear in Malone's lateral miniscus too. So he patched that up and is confident it will heal well on its own. The first few days after the surgery were the worst. It took a couple days to get the anesthetic out of Malone's system. We kept him on some good pain medication, so he wasn't in much pain. For the first 24 hours, Malone had a drainage pouch connected to his knee to help remove excess fluid from the surgery. We had to manually empty the blood/fluid out of it every few hours. It was pretty gross. The Dr. took that out at his appointment the next day. Once the drain was out, Malone really bruised up in his calf. The ace wrap around his knee squeezed alot of that fluid down into his calf/ankle making it swell and bruise. Monday after the surgery, Malone was back to work at his internship with his crutches. There's no slowing that boy down! We managed to get him time off from Broulims for about 2 weeks, which helps. Malone has started Physical Therapy on the 9th at Mobley Physical Therapy in Rigby (which is where I work!). It was pretty obvious that his motion in his knee has decreased as well as the muscle tone in his hamstring/quad. He's about 15 degrees off from getting it straight, but can only get his knee to about 90 degrees bent. So far therapy has helped with the inflammation and his motion. He's still got a long way to go though. They've started him riding a stationary bike, trying to get that motion/strength back. It's been about 2 weeks now since surgery and his knee is finally starting to look normal. He got his stitches out on Monday May 14th, which was nice since by then the wounds were starting to heal over the stitches and was becoming really irritating. Malone hasn't slowed down much since surgery, so by the end of the week he gets pretty exhausted. He plans to start back at broulims next Monda (21st). He'll be going back to working really long hours. I just pray that he will be okay and that he'll have the energy to do what he needs to do.