Eowyn’s second Femoral Head Ostectomy is done, and she’s recovering at Boonville Animal Hospital. The doc called a little while ago to tell me that the surgery went much better this time and she should have an easier recovery. Woohoo! Merry Christmas, Eo. Sorry, I promise that you’ll feel much better soon!
We’ve got two crates in the house for Eowyn, and I’m thinking about adding a third. Each comes with all the modern conveniences — water, a nice soft place to lay down, enough room to turn around in, a Nylabone or two for those immediate chewing needs, and a door that closes and latches.
For a little bit of review, Eowyn has two problems: Dog/Food Aggression, and Hip Dysplasia. The more research, reading, training, and practice I do with Eo, the more I realize that these are very closely connected, intertwined, interlinked, cause-and-effect, systemic issues and NOT discreet behavior problems that can be treated empirically.
There’s currently one in the bedroom, where we all sleep, and in the kitchen next to the table, where we spend most of the rest of our days. She eats in the crate, she naps in the crate while I cook and eat dinner, she’s in the crate when Henry and I are working on obedience… all the usual stuff.
Magically, she has no problems eating in the crate when Henry’s eating his dinner two feet from her. No growling, signs of aggression, stiffness in her posture, whining, barking, or other vocalizing, no lunging and gnashing — nothing. If she is out of the crate and I try to feed him, she will attack him for his food. What’s the difference?
The seat of the pants doggy psychologist in me says that she feels threatened because of her hip pain. She can’t back up a warning (growling, baring teeth) because it’s patently obvious that her hips are bad, so she just attacks without notice. With the crate between her and the other dog, she doesn’t feel like her food supply is threatened. It’s her comfortable place that other dogs don’t go into.
The usual approach from here I guess would be desensitization. I’m wondering if I can’t just AVOID the behavior for now and just not allow her to make any mistakes for now so that she “forgets” the aggressive stuff, and then after her hips are fixed, start working on the actual desensitization work with a chance of it getting results this time…
It’s official. For her Christmas present, Eowyn will be getting her other hip done. I started talking to our vet about two weeks ago about doing it. This morning, we ran down the list of reasons for Eo’s lack of progress with the behavior modification plan, and ended up with hip pain as the last possible cause short of her being untrainable … which we know is not true.
A month ago, we switched Henry’s food and ran him through the parasite wringer again … the result, just one month later, is a dog that shows anxiety but few signs of panic. He will heel off lead, will come on command, will go to the bathroom on command, is my jogging and napping partner, and believe it or not, he no longer snores. The change came and his confidence started building as soon as we fixed his last medical (digestive) issue. After his confidence built up a little bit and he was sure he wasn’t going to rot in a crate all day with no water and no company, he became a new dog.
I have mixed feelings about doing Eo’s other hip so soon after the first. On one hand, I feel like it’s too early. We hadn’t planned on it until May. On the other hand, X-rays show that the head of her right femur continues to degrade and calcify. The pain has to be excruciating. I’m hoping that performing the second FHO (and the ensuing month of bed rest and the reduction in pain) will finally help us get a handle on her reactive behavior.
This is the dumbest excuse for a blog posting in the world. I was really happy to see Eo scratching her neck today using the leg that we did the FHO for her Hip Dysplasia on. Makes me feel like all of the walking and other stuff that we’ve been doing for months on end may not be a waste after all, even though that leg still looks atrophied and she still favors the other!
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.
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.
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.