(see Kramer’s Capers – Part 1 for background info to this post)

So the vet started the surgery (over 2.5 hours after we got to the hospital) and after 3.5 hours under the knife, they decided they needed to wake Kramer up. The only problem was that they didn’t get all of the pins out of him. They got 137 of the 140 pins he ate. That’s right – they decided to leave 3 in him. Not surprisingly, they wanted to do another surgery the next day (that wasn’t included in their “worst-case” estimate) to get those last 3 pins out of him. But we decided against that, and took Kramer to our regular vet as soon as he was stable and let him perform the surgery. It’s a good thing we did that – our vet discovered that one of the incisions in Kramer’s stomach was not properly closed and was leaking fluid into his body. Not a good thing. But after almost 2 more hours of surgery, our vet was able to get the last 3 pins out of Kramer and patched up the mess that was left from the previous surgery.

Today, Kramer is almost completely back to normal. The only evidence of the fiasco is his shaved belly and the scar from the incision. He’s enjoying playing and fighting once again with his brother Cosmo and muttering to everyone is his deep voice. All is well once again in the Birchfield Barnyard.