Eowyn had her hips operated on two months ago (just in time for Christmas, lucky her…) and then spent five weeks on crate rest before I allowed her to move around again.
Right now, she still has some pain when she moves, but she’s been up and around and walking for three weeks. I’ve noticed a marked decrease in reactive behavior. She’s still very food/resource aggressive, but she doesn’t snap all the way to aggression like she used to… she now very noticeably warns before she bites. She doesn’t display much (if any) aggression towards cars anymore on our walks … this is a very recent development, but I’ve been doing everything I can to encourage it!
Also, the “interrupts” that I tried to train into her last year now suddenly work. Telling her to “come” or “down” will now result in her coming or laying down, instead of continuing whatever reaction she was in the middle of. Turns out it wasn’t so much that the behavior specialist I saw (Dr. Kay Stephens of Puppy Love in College Station) was wrong in how to train her, it’s that she was wrong in her evaluation of why Eowyn was reacting the way she was.
And here I’m just happy to have my puppy back!
It’s been a month and change now since Eo’s last hip surgery. With the wonderfully warm weather that we’ve had this weekend, I decided to take her off the Tramadol (painkiller, opiate) that she’s been on since the surgery. She seems to still get around fine, and the pretty consistent movement as I’ve worked in the garden has helped her greatly. She’s not back to 100% yet, of course, but for seven weeks post-op she sure isn’t doing bad.
Eo was so helpful this weekend when I was potting plants.
By the way, I should point out again for people who don’t know me — I’m not a vet, but I’m very involved with my dogs’ medical care and I know as much as possible about the different drugs, treatments, needs, and the background to the behavioral modifications we’re trying to make. Don’t take anything I say about medicine or veterinary stuff as gospel.
One thing that’s apparent is that a month of inactivity leading up to the surgery and a month of inactivity recovering from the surgery has left her with some remarkable atrophy in her rear legs. Her favorite position is sitting down with most of her weight on her front legs; she’s built like a bodybuilder on the front half but has nothing but loose bone and sinew on the rear. We’ve been walking nightly in an effort to rebuild this, but haven’t been putting any serious distance on. This weekend, I started working in the yard on my garden, and I’ve been letting her pick how much she moves and putting her away when she gets crabby or frantic.
The other thing that’s been rather obvious since the surgery is that she’s MUCH less crabby. She hasn’t gone after Henry with the intent to cause serious harm in a while. (Yes, this used to be a big problem. And it’s the reason she was inactive for a month before the surgery and the reason we did it so soon after the first one.) To Henry’s credit, he’s learned how not to provoke her, and he’s even been initiating play recently by bowing and pawing at her — she’s seemed to enjoy playing with him when she’s in the mood, but I’ve been stopping it before it’s really gotten “started” in puppy terms because I know that she’ll hurt herself if I don’t.
I haven’t been posting much about her because “Yeah, she’s on crate rest… still on crate rest… in her crate” makes for boring blog entries. It’s nice to have some progress to report. Indications are good that she’ll make a full recovery and will go on to boss everyone around the house for many more years.
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!
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!
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.