My dog is back

Tomorrow marks 1 month since Ellie’s surgery to amputate her front leg. It both feels like it happened yesterday and happened ages ago. This past week things have gone so good! It took Ellie a couple days to get back to normal after having to be sedated for a skin biopsy, but even with sedation and the carboplatin she had no vomiting or diarrhea which was a big sigh of relief for me. She was definitely tired, but we’ll have to see if that was due to the sedation or the carboplatin. Next time she goes in for carboplatin it’s just that no sedation so we’ll see then.

After she recouped from that she’s been an all star! As of yesterday she is off of all pain meds. This past week I did a day of 200mg x3, then a couple days 200mg x2, couple days of 100mg in morning 200 mg at night, then 100-200mg once a day, and now none! Highly suggest asking for 100mg capsules it’s so nice having the freedom to really taper them off. I know I have read on here that some vets cut them off at 8 days/14 days etc. Maybe there are scenarios where that is needed per other conditions or issues with your dog, but for reference Ellie was on carprofen/gabapentin for 2 weeks before her surgery and 10 days after, they did do a hard cut off on the carprofen, but I was given liberty with the gabapentin to give as needed, she really needed a full dose (300-400mg x3) till 3 weeks after the surgery and then slowly weaned off over this past week. My vet was so easy about it and gave me 120- 100mg gabapentin capsules refill… so they were not at all worried about her having it for a longer time. Just wanted to share, in case you also feel your puppers needs some extra, it really is the worse to see your dog in obvious pain….it’s already hard enough as is in my opinion!

I’m sure it’s a combination of both, but between Ellie being on less gabapentin which causes a sedation effect, and just feeling better in general she has become more and more like her old self. My favorite is her starting to wake me up again by coming up to the bed and laying her head on my bed and doing her impatient huffing (it’s not a bark… I can only describe it as adorable breathing?? haha) It’s impossible to not smile at this, and I didn’t realize how much I missed it till she did it! I mean c’mon…. look at that face!

In addition she hung out with us outside all weekend while we were doing different chores like she used to. She would go lay down when she needed a break, but she kept checking in and being a good supervisor to make sure we were being productive… but also was totally game if we needed a break to play, haha.

We are still working on endurance- we are probably up to .5 miles a day walks. With the weather getting so nice I might start doing our usual 1.5-2 mile walk and just bring the trailer to load her up as needed, or jump on my e-bike and bike around to other shorter walks. We have a really pretty bike path that follows the river that goes through town, that might be a great stretch.

The only negative I have at this time, is I do think she is still having either phantom pain or maybe some incision tenderness. maybe once a day or every other day she will be laying down and let out a small yelp and jump up looking around at what got her. I do think the warm compress helps alleviate that (maybe- I don’t have definitive proof), and I haven’t been great about doing that the last couple days so I’ll stay more strict on it. I have our next PT appointment this Thursday to ask them about it. I know the therapist told me about massaging the incision, because that scar tissue can pinch/irritate nerves, she didn’t want me to do it just yet since that was right when Ellie got her sutures out, but as the incision healed to start. I have a little bit, but am unsure how much/how hard to go at this point. I look forward to chatting about this with them… and maybe getting some new exercises! Ellie has become a master of her current ones!

As you can see above Ellie is the perfect patient, and I think she really enjoys the warm compress. thanks to your guys input my massage and stretching technique has gotten a lot better and she doesn’t mind it one bit anymore. I can’t tell if I’ve improved anything there, but I’m confident I haven’t hurt anything…that’s another thing I’m looking forward to come Thursday!

That’s all I have for now! Cheers to an all positive (well 98% positive) post!