OMSI and Riley's Surgery

Paul and Benjamin in a space shuttle capsule.

Riley needed to have surgery on her knee (she tore everything in it. This is her second surgery, second knee. She had her right one done three years ago.) Since the surgery is not done locally, we took her up to Portland to my sister Christy's vet office. She has been a tech there for several months now. Riley needed to stay for three days. We picked her up on Wednesday when we dropped my sister Cortni off at PDX to fly back to Alaska. :o) Bye Cortni - we had fun!

After we dropped Riley off, since we were in the big city anyway we decided to make a day of it and hit Ikea (and fall in love with new kitchen accessories and bedroom furniture) and OMSI. This was the first time we took The Man to OMSI. We took lots of food and snacks with us and were totally prepared for any meltdowns. He slept too and from PDX. In OMSI however, I think he was a little overwhelmed by us. We wanted him to see and try everything and may have pushed him a little too much. He is also starting his terrible twos, so we need to figure out how to adjust. He is fine doing things on his own, but he does not respond well to having toys taken and he hogs them all himself. So then he does hit or push. In the areas of OMSI where it was designed for kids hands on play, this made it tough on us to keep him out of trouble. Otherwise, it was a good day. And I would recommend people to take kids of a similar age there for a few hours. We went on a Monday and they aren't usually open but they were because of Thanksgiving weekend. There was probably only 60 people there total and it was easy to move from one activity to the next.

Two pretty funny things happened with Benjamin as we were getting ready to leave. As we left our last activity room, the elevator was straight ahead. And to me it looked like you could walk in a little alcove next to it and maybe watch it worked. Benjamin charged right to it and when he was a few feet away, I realized it was a window. Before anyone could do anything, he ran into it full speed, got kicked on his butt, and then looked around like to ask "why and who did that to me?". It was hilarious and sad all at the same time.

The second thing was another oversight on his part about 15 minutes later. They have a revolving light that displays their logo on the floor. He was standing in the middle of it, admiring it when a child about age 5 started running around it. Eventually Benjamin started chasing him. They were having a blast for several minutes when Benjamin running full speed, just did not quite make the turn and ran right into a display board they had, narrowly missing the metal pole holding it up! The poor boy got in trouble with his mom - yelled at him for making Benjamin dizzy. It didn't matter. Benjamin was fine and it was entertainment!

Oh and here are pictures of the poor girl when we got her home on Wednesday. In dogs, they don't bother to fix the tears as they will probably just tear them again. instead they make it a more stable joint by altering the angle. Her knee angle used to be 24 degrees and now it is at 6 degrees, a much more stable joint.

Before













After (note how her the upper corner of her tibia was cut and reattached)