I’m back from my travels, and Eowyn’s back from 10 days at the boarding kennel. I boarded her at the same vet that did the surgery, and they did a better job than I did at keeping her mostly immobile — but that means she’s lost a serious amount of muscle mass.
Since she doesn’t seem to be in any pain per say (just not willing to trust that leg — rightly so, as it’s all bone and tendon after not bearing any weight for five weeks!), I’ve started walking her again for very short walks in the morning and evening. The exercise has been good or her and being outside for a bit has calmed her down so that I can actually get some work done at night!
Eo’s main problem with this surgery is that she’s been licking a certain part of it, to the point where the dissolving sutures have given out and the wound almost got infected. The lampshade-style collars have been useless — she either figures out a way around it, or figures out how to get it off … methods for the latter include destroying it and tearing it into little pieces so that it can never be worn again.
But I finally managed to beat her drive to lick! It only took me two weeks to outsmart my dog.
Step 1- Get a “nonstick dressing for covering wounds” from your local pharmacy or grocery store. The pads I had on hand were about 2 inches by 3 inches. Step 2- Attach it to the dog. I used white medical tape. It doesn’t stick too well, but well enough for our purposes - we’re not trying to seal it off, we’re just trying to cover it. Step 3 - Spray the outside of the bandage with Grannick’s Bitter Apple. It’s a spray solution that I imagine tastes and smells horrible to a dog .. I can’t smell it, though, so I don’t mind! Be careful not to get any Bitter Apple in the wound itself or in the dog’s nose or eyes.
So far she’s left it alone. I’m sure if I put her in her kennel the smell would drive her nuts and she’d tear it off out of frustration, but in the meantime we’re good to go. And hopefully a few days of keeping this covered and smelling/tasting horrible will finally allow things to close up.
Eo’s favorite treat is also something that she can chew on. In fact, her favorite treat happens to be bones and rawhides.
For rawhides, I’ve found that grocery store brands are sometimes the best. The rawhide from HEB grocers (Hill Country Fare brand) are much better than the ones you get at PetCo / PetSmart — thicker, more tightly rolled, and at $8/bag the’re literally half the price of the ones at PetSmart.
For bones, it’s important that you do NOT buy cooked bones from the grocery store for your dogs. Ask at the meat counter for RAW BONES WITH MEAT STILL ON THEM. Cooked bones are a danger to your dog because they will splinter as the dog chews on them, and the splinters are sharp like little knives — as they make their way through your dog’s digestive system, they’ll make little cuts. Would you feed your dog a handful of little knives? I didn’t think so! Uncooked bones are so much safer and you should be able to buy them by the pound from your butcher.
Eowyn’s been healing up over the past week. It’s kind of tough for her — she’s become the whiniest dog ever because I won’t let her run around and play — but she’s surviving, and her incision is healing relatively well.
The only upset was this morning. I woke up to the sound of licking, and even though she had her lampshade collar on, she had managed to move it on her neck so that her mouth was long enough to get to the wound — and she’d licked it open. Off to the vet clinic we go! We were lucky that they had a lull right at noon where they could stitch her back up with metal stitches.
I purchased an Everlasting Treat Ball (comes with one treat) today at PetSmart for Eowyn. Unfortunately, this product doesn’t live up to it’s name.
The Everlasting Treat Ball is a soft blue jelly-like item that you can slip an “everlasting treat” into. The everlasting treats are about the size of clay pigeons and are made up of edible, digestable stuff that’s fairly hard — think an edible Nylabone or a Greenie or something of that nature.
Eowyn sniffed the treat and loved it. Unfortunately, she figured out in under a minute that if she chewed on the holder the long way, the treat would pop out and she could chew on it directly. So that I could fully review it, I purchased two ‘refills’ for the top of the ball, and since you can put two in at a time, I did so to see if she could get THEM out too. Bad news — it’s far too easy for a smart dog.
My advice: Just get the fillers themselves, and skip the holder ball.
Eo came home last night. Her incision looked pretty evil — after the ride home, the skin around it was raised and kind of red, and I could easily see why they kept her for a couple of days. 
She’s quite whiny as you’d expect, and I’m still surprised at how much energy she’s got under the load of drugs the vet gave me for her… plus the Acepromazine that I asked for to help keep her still! She’s already putting a little weight on the leg every few steps, which the doc said was a good sign.
The hardest thing for me to do right now is to keep her from moving around too much and tearing open the incision. I’ve already caught her trying to lick it a few times — a cone collar may be in her future if she keeps that up. She desperately wants to be outside resting in the sun — and we might just take one of her beds out there tomorrow and spend some time in the fresh air. Didn’t want to do that today with as raw as her wound looked.
After three days at the animal hospital — she’s home. Drugged up on lots of good stuff, sore, with half her butt shaved, not otherwise especially happy, she was beyond excited to leave the vet hospital. She pretty much dragged me straight to the car!
Prognosis is good, with kennel rest for the next six to eight weeks. More details and maybe some pictures later.
Quick update… Haven’t heard if Eo’s coming home tonight or not yet — hopefully I will within the next hour or two. I visited her again today at lunch and she was drinking plenty of water and was even more mobile than she was yesterday — although she didn’t resist laying back down with her good side to the floor as hard as she did the first day.
I visited Eo today at noon. The good news is that she’ll get to come home tomorrow in all likelihood. I took some pictures of her in the kennel, and then got Dr. Glade to put an X-ray up and let me take a picture of it.
First off on our little tour — here’s the Boonville Animal Hospital in College Station, Texas:
Inside the recovery area, — Hey, it’s an Eowyn! In a kennel! She was sitting up when I came in and pressed her nose right up against the kennel.
(more…)
Eo’s going to be staying at least until Friday evening at the Boonville Animal Hospital. I visited her today and she was just coming out from the anesthesia, and the little bit of pain before the sedatives and pain meds kicked in was just starting to hit, so she cried a lot.
After visiting her briefly and hearing her cry, I dashed home and brought her a blanket (Eo won’t sleep anywhere that doesn’t smell like her — if we go somewhere and she doesn’t have one of ‘her’ blankets to lay down in, she’ll wander all night trying to find just the right place to sleep — usually either ON me, or in my suitcase.) and some of her Innova for tomorrow when she can have solid food. I’ll go see her at lunch tomorrow and may take some pictures.
