Totally Off Topic - Dog hip problem

[Dusty2004]

Gld to hear it is good

YAY! Molly is out of surgery and the vet said she's doing fine. They'll keep her drugged up through the night and then she come home tomorrow!

Thanks again for your kindness and concern. If no one minds, I'd like to post updates on her progress.

Please do keep up posted on updates. Family is family.

Dusty

[BHoffman]

Speaking of family, Hubby has decided that today is a good one to have a major, major headache. We need to pick Molly up and bring her home and take care of her. I'm so angry at him I could spit and hiding that completely "Do you need an icepack, honey?" "Can I get you something, sweetie?" "Can I rub your poor neck, dear?" Ewwwww.

All I really want to do is just shake the daylights outta him and tell him to man up and get with the program here. Heck, I even called his MOTHER who is not available because she is extraordinarily busy at work this time of year. I'm trying to be compassionate about all this, but for the love of God you'd think the guy would be stepping hard up to the plate but noooooo. 21 years I've been with him. Never seen him act like this before.

OK, I'm done. Will post later after Molly is home and settled. Thanks for listening.

[jeff501]

We have a chocolate lab named Co-Co. In June of 2007 my wife was driving to work and this lab ran onto the highway and someone in a van hit the poor animal and just left it to die in the road. My wife saw the entire thing and stopped to check on the dog. It was on the yellow line whimpering and naturally afraid of her as she had just suffered a traumatic event.

With the help of another motorist, they got the dog into her car and she took it to a veterinarian near where she works. The dog had a broken pelvis and lost a few teeth. We posted signs in the area but no one responded, the dog healed up and she's been ours ever since then. I've had several dogs over the years but Co-Co has to be the sweetest, loving animal of them all - and all were loving.

Co-Co has completely healed, and when we let her out she gallops into the yard happy to be alive.

Hope your dog makes a full recovery.

[BHoffman]

Jeff - what a lucky dog to have found kindness and love with your family.

Molly came to live with us because somebody dumped her off in our neighborhood in the night. We found her when we were walking our other dog. She was about 4 months old.

Molly is home and didn't want to eat until I popped open a jar of meat baby food. She knows that sound and the ears went right up. She polished that off, followed up with her dog food and some more baby food mixed in. She's had her pain medication and she peed. She's sleeping now. So, I think she's all set for the afternoon. Whew!

This is not going to be easy. We have to help her walk with a nifty sling that goes under her belly. Bandage comes off in two weeks.

Hubby has made remarkable recovery after seeing Molly. I think the thought of seeing her all bandaged up had a lot to with it. She sure was glad to see us and very happy to be home. I don't like to think that she may have believed we'd abandoned her.

[Lion]

Time

Molly probably didn't worry about you abandoning her. Dogs don't have a particularly accurate sense of time. My daughter's dog greats her as if she were away for years after she returns from the bathroom! She's remembering that she feels well when she's home and happy to be home with you.

[BHoffman]

Fentanyl Pain Patch

Has anyone ever used one?

Molly has one. Just wondering what the effects might be like. So far, she seems OK with it and cannot reach it to chew on or anything like that. Vet said it lasts for 3 days and then we just pulll it off and take it in to their office for disposal when we go back for a bandage removal in about 2 weeks.

[BHoffman]

The final bill is $2350, less than I was afraid of.

Molly slept through the night and woke us up around 5AM to go out and pee. She was sore this morning and we gave her the part of a Tramadol pain pill that she didn't spit out. We wrapped in a little piece of roast pork, evidently too little of a piece or else she's just onto us. That Fenanyl patch seems to be working just fine.

She wants to spend all morning in the back yard with Hubby, who has become Florence Nightingale. That's good, because I have work piling up and I want to get a lot of it finished this weekend.

Thank you very much for allowing me to post here. I'm so glad her recovery at day two is still uneventful. I guess it gets more tricky after the bandage is removed and she feels like nothing is wrong and wants to jump and run. That bandage is sort of huge and is around her entire leg. She can barely drag it around and we're using a sling to support her so she doesn't fall and hurt something else.

The ligament in her knee was completely severed, so the surgeon drilled holes in her bone and threaded some sort of cord to hold her knee together. After awhile, scar tissue forms along the cord and that is the permanent fix. If she breaks that cord before the scar tissue forms, then we're in trouble and it's more surgery. They say 8 weeks of NO jumping or running. We don't have the heart to just stick her in the crate all day, so we're trying to keep to her regular schedule of back yard time, nap time, etc and trying to keep her happy or at least not miserable. I feel sorry for my little friend and will be so relieved to see her walking without pain.

[erchess]

All Pets

Best wishes to all the pets who own users of this board.

We have six cats and a lab mix all of whom showed up at the house begging for help after being abandoned on our very rural road. One cat developed cystits last winter and nearly died but he's ok now. When I was I think in high school the cat we had required knee surgery to repair an acl tear. That surgery for cats was new at the time but she came through just fine and lived a long time thereafter.

[snowshine]

Our boy Snowshine was on the patch for the final 6 months or so before the cancer got him. He was a different dog, i.e., he was normal after getting a new patch. The hardest part was making sure he was completely shaved where the patch goes, else it hurts to take off. Clove oil is effective at removing the gunk left behind.

[BHoffman]

Thanks for that advice. Molly's patch comes off tomorrow and we were wondering about how to get the sticky off her. Clove oil - have to add that to the shopping list.

She was very alert yesterday and had trouble settling down at night in her kennel, so I gave her 1/2 a "mild sedative" called Ace. She was fast asleep within 15 minutes and had a pretty good night - got us up around 3AM to pee and 6AM for breakfast and then back to sleep until around 8AM. Still sort of dopey this AM, and her other pain pill also makes her sleepy.

She spent the whole morning out in the backyard with us on a blanket dozing off and on and now we would very much like her to go potty so we can see if she will take a nap this afternoon. Both of us have a bunch of stuff to do today. I feel bad griping about Hubby. He has been absolutely wonderful.

Boy, I'm not looking forward to when she gets the bandage off because that is going to require 24/7 vigilance to make sure she doesn't run or jump or do anything to mess up the surgery. We are too soft to just make her stay in her kennel. She does not walk; She trots everywhere. She also just explodes into action if she hears the garbage truck out front or in the back alley. We know its schedule, so will have to be very careful around that time. Of course, any large truck is also a mortal enemy. Only 53 more days to go......ewwww.

Erchess - thank you for sharing your experience with the cat. That is so very kind of you to take in the poor pets that are abandoned.

Thanks for all the advice and moral support. I figured there were some pet lovers amongst us

[BHoffman]

We managed to remove the patch without maiming either the dog or ourselves. Molly otherwise is doing fine. I am absolutely amazed at how little pain she is showing, and hope she doesn't have a lot. We've been keeping it up with the medications and she has been fine - good eating, pooping, etc.

The bandage has slipped down her leg a little so we have to take her to the vet on Monday and probably get her re-wrapped or at least looked at.

I yelled at her today and feel bad about that. She is very strong even on three legs and was pushing me around while Hubby was trying to eat his lunch. She figured that should be her lunch. The meds are evidently making her bold.

Thanks for listening.

[BHoffman]

Molly-Olly is still doing well. Her bandage slipped so they decided to remove it and not re-wrap because she didn't have a lot of swelling. Right now she's in her kennel with the dreadful e-collar lampshade thing and I gave her a pain pill so hoping she'll sleep for a few hours this afternoon.

[Dusty2004]

Glad to hear it!

Molly-Olly is still doing well. Her bandage slipped so they decided to remove it and not re-wrap because she didn't have a lot of swelling. Right now she's in her kennel with the dreadful e-collar lampshade thing and I gave her a pain pill so hoping she'll sleep for a few hours this afternoon.

Glad that Molly is doing well. Before you know it she will be running around playing with you again.

Dusty

[Roland Slugg]

Robodoc

There is a computer-controlled device called "ROBODOC" that drills a perfect femoral cavity using digital imaging reference points. The equipment was first developed by a veterinarian and medical doctor duo, Harold A. "Hap" Paul, DVM and William Bargar, MD, in Carmichael and Davis, California ... near Sacramento. The device was originally used on animals, and the first field test was a THR performed on a snow leopard in the Calgary Zoo in around 1990. The cat was walking without a noticeable limp later that same day.

Today the device is used primarily in hospitals performing THRs on humans, but there may be a few veterinary hospitals that have one, or have shared access to one. If you can find a veterinary hospital that has a ROBODOC, you may wish to speak with someone there. Call your nearest university veterinary school to inquire. The procedure using ROBODOC will be expensive, probably $10K and maybe twice that! Is it worth it for a 7-yo, medium-sized dog? Only you can say.

I invite all who may be interested in this to click the following link and read about Hap Paul, who died of Hodgkin's disease in 1993 at the age of 42 or 43. (The obituary below has Dr. Paul's age wrong at 59 ... corrected at the end.)

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/13/obituaries/dr-howard-a-paul-dies-at-59-developed-robotic-surgical-arm.html?pagewanted=1

Dr. Paul was a friend of mine, a tax client, and a wonderful guy.

This information may be of interest to many more of you than the dog owner who started this thread. ROBODOC is now used in hospitals all over the world drilling the femoral cavity for thousands of THRs each year. Many of us will need this procedure some day, including this aging writer.

[BHoffman]

Hi Roland - thank you for the link. I did come across info about it when researching.

Molly had her staples removed today and everything is fine. She needs to take it very easy for the next 6 weeks and then we can start short slow walks.

Thank you all very much for your kindness