Today is just a few days past the one year mark of the day Moose slipped his collar, ran off after a cat, and got hit by a landscaping truck. What a year it’s been!
I still get a twinge of guilt sometimes, looking at his little tail-less butt and thinking that I could have gotten a harness sooner, or somehow stopped him from darting off after the cat in the bushes. Looking at pictures of Moose before the accident gives me a little pang, too.
Over the course of the year, Moose has started twitching his tail muscles when he’s really excited — like when I come home from work. He didn’t do that at first, but he does it more and more as time goes by. It’s noticeable enough that friends have pointed it out to me — and trust me, there is NO nub there to wag. He’s really just twitching his butt. It’s adorable.
Some of my neighbors have commented on how well Moose healed up — once his hair grew back in, it was hard to tell there was ever supposed to be a tail there. Here’s a look back at Moose after his surgery. Here’s Moose today:
(He loves to lay by the sliding glass door and watch the world — and often tries to squirm his way behind the blinds.)
The car accident was in one way a mixed blessing — I got a chance to find out about his hip dysplasia early (though I fear that the impact could have aggravated the disease). Now that warmer weather is back to the Pacific Northwest, Moose is having fewer mornings of pain and limping. Definitely a good thing! And knowing about the hip dysplasia gives me a chance to try to intervene in the progress of the disease.
We’re all a lot more careful when we walk. Moose still stops from time to time to watch cars (especially large white vans and SUVs) go by. But outside of that, you’d hardly know that anything happened.