She's here.....(warning, its a bit wordy!)

So we brought our new puppy home on Saturday morning (yesterday). After all my worries about her being spayed early, I got a horrible phone call on Friday (they day she was being spayed) to tell me that there had been "complications" while she was having the surgery and I wouldn't be able to bring her home for another 5 days. As you can imagine, my heart sank. The lady on the phone was unable to tell me what these complications were, so I asked to speak to the vet, or vet nurse, only to be told that wouldn't be possible as they in surgery all day. And not able to speak to the kennel manager until Tuesday as she was away. I was panicking & imagining the worst, and in a bit of a rage that no-one would tell me what had happened, when the puppy was mine, as all the paperwork, payments etc had been completed. Then, an hour later, the vet rings me. She told me that after they had intubated her she coughed quite violently for a period due to being a bit light (not enough sedation - its always tricky in small animals, hence why I wasn't keen for the operation!) and the vet thought that she had torn her trachea (breathing tube) as there was an air leakage. She said that she'd done hundreds of tiny pup spays and never had this problem ad was extremely apologetic. It sounded to me as if they used the wrong sized tube or didn't have the cuff (balloon that holds the tube in place) inflated enough, as its extremely unusual to sustain a tracheal tear from coughing. I rang round few other vets to see what they thought and they agreed that it all sounded a bit odd. Anyhow, they reassured me that if there was a small tear it would heal on its own and there would be no long standing problems (wheeffff!) I convinced the vet to let me ring her home the next day, as she was going to get closer observation her with me than at the cold pound kennels and being a person nurse I would know what signs to look for if she deteriorated.

She is a very cool puppy! Still haven't decided on a name (so far we like Spy - like Eye-spy cause of her patch, what do you think?) She has done a fair bit of whining (and her toilet training is not going to plan at all!) but after 24 hours has really settled in, and wow, what a fast learner she is.

Pepper has been amazing, far better with her than I'd ever hoped. She has let the puppy climb on her, sleep with her on her bed, play with her ball (this is awesome as Pepper is fine with food but resource guards her toys a bit) and follow her around relentlessly. I'm so relieved, I was worried she's be a bit snappy but so far so good, they're not allowed together unsupervised as the pups so small but I'm really pleased. The hardest part for her is watching me train the puppy, I think shes a bit confused about the clicker going off and her not getting a treat - any ideas about this???

We also had Misty and Bruno stay for the weekend so it was a bit full on, glad that we have the 1st 24 hours under our hats and that the puppy is healthy. Looking forward to training and can't wait until she toilet trained and not peeing and pooping seemingly every 2 minutes.