Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Poor puppy

Calli had always been a little crazy.   We have gotten used to that over the last two years.   She jumps even though we've tried to stop her.  She licks.  She gets ridiculously excited if you even look at her in her general direction.  She frantically runs around the backyard at full speed.   She's part off the reason we got this house, because of how great this yard is and how much she loves to run. 
Well last weekend she was doing just that while D.Soup and his brother put his new shed together.  She either took a wrong turn our stepping down wrong.   She has not put her right hind leg down since.  She had some issues a few weeks ago where she would pull that same leg up, but she always ended up back to normal so we didn't think too much of it.
We took her to the vet Monday before we left for vacation.  She was pretty sure a cruciate ligament was torn, but wanted us to check with an orthopedic.   She gave us some doggie ibuprofen to help with the pain and told us to keep her off it as much as possible.
We gave her a lot of down time while at the beach even though we could tell she was getting cabin fever.

When we got back from vacation we took her to see a doggie orthopedic.  He checked her leg and watched her walk, and verified that she had torn her Cranial Cruciate Ligament.  It's like the human Anterior Cruciate Ligament.  He highly recommended she have surgery to repair the damage, because if not she would have really bad arthritis in that leg. 

We said our goodbyes, and went home to make a serious decision.  There are two surgeries that will fix a torn CCL, both are expensive.  The first takes a type of string, and mimics the positioning of the cruciate ligament.  Scar tissue build up over time strengthens this hold.  The surgery is the lesser expensive of the two.

The other surgery is called TPLO, and it changes the angle that the knee sits, removing the need for the ligament completely.  Its more expensive than the first option.  But the vet (and another vet who is a relative) said that it is much more likely to be beneficial in the long run because of Calli's size, age and activity level.  She's almost a large breed dog, just on the cusp.  And she's only 2.

So we made our decision to get her the TPLO, and Wednesday morning we dropped her off for surgery.  I was so upset all day, and worried about her.  They called in the afternoon to let us know that she did great, and that she was out of surgery and resting.  We had to wait until Thursday afternoon to pick her up.

Thursday rolled around and we anxiously worked a full day.  Our appointment to pick her up was at 4 pm.  When we got there they were telling us all about how she hates the cone (which we already knew) and how she had broken free multiple times.  The vet even called her "Houdoggie".

They gave us her medications, and instructions to keep her fairly stationary for the next 2 weeks.  We also have to prevent her from licking her leg. 

This was her on the ride home:
Not happy about this situation.
Sad little leg:
Naked leg.
She was much happier when we got her home and settled down. 
Happy now that we're on our bed.
I gave her some food, right in front of her face.  But apparently she was just.too.tired. to eat it.  Which was fine with me.  I also gave her water out of a solo cup, so she wouldn't have to get up and walk over to the water bowl.  She's not spoiled or anything.
Obviously.
We are trying our best to keep her on bedrest for the most part.  She's gotten very energetic the last few days (which they warned us about), almost back to her normal self... but not quite.  She's got pretty much one more week of restricted movement, and then we go back to the orthopedic to get the staples removed.  After that she's on 4 more weeks of restricted movement.  Then we can start physical therapy.  The vet recommended slow walking, for about 5 minutes to start with and building up from there.  He also recommended swimming, if she's not too scared (which is a strong possibility with this girl).  Conveniently there is a doggie underwater therapy facility right down the street from us.  Crazy.  Once we get closer to that we're going to look into it.


****WARNING****

The last picture is of the scar on her leg.  It's not terrible, just a bunch of staples and some redness.  But I don't know how squeamish you are, so I tried to set it up so it would be blurry unless you hovered over the image.  But because I'm new to this it DID NOT WORK.  So be warned, don't scroll down if you don't think your stomach can handle it.  I'll try to keep working on the blur thing, I'd really like it to work :(





















Scar.

Crazy puppy.

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