June 2008, month of the roses

There were only 3 roses in the garden, when we bought our house in Lelystad.
I LOVE roses, especially smelling roses. Sadly those 3 have no smell at all...
So we added some smelling roses in the past years, in 2006 an English rose, in 2007 a climbing rose and this month 4 more.
Besides the roses, I enjoyed the flowers of the passionflower, a purple clematis and a red clematis.

Gladdich and Chimay

Xin-Feng's Crackers

I got sad news from France this week: Xin-Feng's Crackers, litterbrother of our Chimay, died in an accident.

Vale Crackers...

Spring

Past month the garden was blooming like never before:


And I removed the shrubs at the back of the garden and we put a statue there:

It takes time, but we transformed the garden into a garden we all enjoy.

Swallows and Gladdich

This morning I saw the first swallows. In Dutch we have a saying that "one swallow makes no summer", but I saw two of them ;-)

The past week we worried again about Gladdich. We thought he ruptured the ligament of his other knee. Today we had an appointmet with our vet. The vet took our worries away, Gladdich has no problem with his other knee.
However, he has some trouble with his back, but knowing now for sure it is not his knee, we can go for longer walks.

So I went for a long walk with Chimay and Gladdich. Gladdich walked better at the end of the walk.

poor Gladdich

It was an eventfull month for Gladdich.

He had trouble with his right knee for some time, it went off and on.
In January he started limping again, but this time it did not heal, so we went to our vet in Dronten.
She took x-rays of both knees and you could clearly see some difference. In the right knee there was more space between the upper and lower bone and the knee was a tad bit swollen.
So the vet sended us to De Tweede Lijn, where we got an appointment with othopedic vet Jauernig. We decided Gladdich would get surgery on February 29th, first artroscopy and if needed ACL surgery.

Gladdich in the garden, before surgery

On February 29th we went to the clinic in Wilhelminaoord. Frank had to work that night, so Jacqueline went with us. Frank, Chimay and I picked Gladdich up in the afternoon. Chimay was very happy to see Gladdich back, you never know what can happen if you leave your Chow-companion at a vet-clinic...
The arthroscopy revealed a damaged, but not completely broken, ligament. So they went on and put an artificial ligament in his knee.

Gladdich was very pitiful and the first night was terrible, a lot of whining and restless.
But he seemed to get better quickly, after two weeks we were optimistic about his recovery. Unfortunately last weekend he made a wrong turn or so (we did not see anything actually happening) and now his knee is swollen and painful again :-(

Friday we go back to the clinic, for the sceduled appointment after 3 weeks, so we wonder what the orthopedic vet has to say about it.