PAPILLON PIPPIN(from Baltimore, Maryland)

Day 2 Post Surgery

Click on pictures to enlarge.

It’s been a little over 24 hours since we brought her home from the hospital and she hasn’t eaten anything or peed.  She did drink a good bit of water this morning.  She did eat and peed yesterday morning at the clinic before we got her.  Before surgery with the broken leg and meds, she was only peeing once a day.

She is grumpy today.  Snapping at us.  I’ve read that this is normal behavior due to the meds.  To humans it seems like your pet is depressed.  Resting well though.  Had a little bit of a restless night.  Just kept moving and shifting getting used to wearing the cone at night.  Plus, that is a side effect from the meds.  She is wearing the cone today.  Has only tried to get to her stitches a couple times without wearing it.  I kept the cone on her more today since she doesn’t mind it.  Plus if I walk out into the kitchen to get a drink, I don’t want her to be able to get to her stitches.  Incision and swelling look a bit better.  Taking pictures every day of it for a medical diary in case something changes.

When we take her out to pee, she just holds her tail down.  I’m hoping she will pee later today.  We put a towel underneath her chest and walk her a few steps.  You can see that she is using her hip muscle where the leg was removed.  But she doesn’t want to use that other rear leg yet.  Just wants to try to sit.  The Orthopedic Surgeon said to cut her Baytril and Carprofen in half and give twice a day instead of once since she is so small and it is effecting her bowel movements.  Even with a laxative 3 times a day she was only pooping once a week.  Now that she has a pain patch in addition to the two medications, who knows when she’ll poop.  She goes Wed. to get her pain patch replaced.  Then in 8 days from today, her stitches get removed.

I’m going to order the Cosequin, Welactin, and a pair of those traction socks for her soon.  We have hardwood floors in our living room as well as hardwood stairs.  Although she won’t be doing stairs ever again.  It’s kinda strange, she was already afraid of stairs.  She used them, but a lot of the time she would lie at the bottom of the steps until you brought her up.  Her accident happened at a friend’s house though.  Somehow she got caught and twisted her leg at the bottom of their deck steps/concrete.  We don’t know the exact cause.  I saw her go down the steps, turned to talk to someone, looked back at her and she was in the grass looking at her leg.  Then got up and she held her leg up.  Broke it in 3 places.  I will never forget how the leg dangled there nor the look in her eyes.

When she was a puppy, she had surgery on the hip of the same leg that she broke.   We adopted her at age 2 and weren’t told exactly what happened – whether it was from trauma or in her genes.  We always wondered what happened to her. When we saw the x-ray, you can actually see a missing piece around her hip joint.  Ortho said it won’t effect her at all now that the leg is gone.  She was always more flexible in that leg.  Matter of fact we nicknamed her “kickstand” because she would always sit and have that leg out to the side.  Now I guess we can nickname her “tripod”.

Main concern in the future is to keep her weight down, Ortho said.  We had been trying harder this past year to get her weight down – about a pound is what vet said she could lose, but not much more than that.  She’s lost 2 since her leg breakage.  That was 3 weeks of eating only about 6 tablespoons of food per day.  Now we need to keep it down.  Of course, I’ll let her eat as much as she wants during this recovery time period.  Going to try boiled chicken tomorrow as she was eating that last week.  Will also get some liverwurst and baby food to see if she’ll go for that.