Hi everyone!

My name is Bec, and I'm quite new here. I came across the site after my three legged dog, Ziggy, started to have troubles with his one remaining front leg. We adopted him as a rescue dog in early June this year and he has brought so much love into our lives. He's a real sweet boy. He's now just over 7 months old, and unfortunately has angular limb deformity in his one front leg. He had surgery aiming to correct it a few weeks ago, and we're now on the rocky path to recovery.

He is being treated by a specialist at an animal hospital near our home city in Brisbane, Australia, and is in great hands. But because his three-leggedness means we can't expect a 'normal' recovery there are a lot of uncertainties ahead.
For now, while he continues to grow, his front leg is bandaged up with a splint. The bone had not only bent, but also started to corkscrew, so the idea is that the splint will encourage the bone to straighten while he is still growing. We'll have some more scans to see how it has progressed, and then we might have more time on the splint, more time with a new splint, or more surgery. We are hopeful for positive progress, but for all of Ziggy's time with us he has really had one health issue after another (infected eye, paralysis tick, night time vomiting, chronic diarrhoea...), so we are planning for the worst case - which is more surgery and a lot more care.

At the moment he needs constant supervision and his activity limited so he doesn't damage his leg any more while he is healing and hopefully the growth is correcting. Because of the bandage, any toilet trips require that we cover his bandage to prevent it getting wet or dirty, so every trip out to the garden takes time wrapping the leg, carrying Ziggy, and bringing him back in. We love him so much, but it is hard work.

I had started a blog about Ziggy's treatment before joining Tripawds, so I've just copied it all over to his blog space here: ziggysjourney.tripawds.com

A big lesson for us is that a puppy with three legs really does need special care, and different rules to a 'normal' dog. I wish we had found Tripawds when Ziggy first came home with us. The adoption centre told us to treat him no differently to a four legged dog, and when we signed up to a preventative health plan with the local vet - and asked what we needed to do becasue of his three-leggedness - we were told to make sure we didn't go easy on him because of his missing limb. We thought we had done the right thing by seeking expert opinions, but unfortunately we weren't warned about the potential damage to the growth plates in his one front leg due to the strain of being a growing puppy and carrying so much weight on just one leg.

The x-rays before Ziggy's treatment indicate that there may have been a fracture in his elbow which led to the damage to the growth plate - but it's inconclusive. It might be an injury from before we adopted him, or something since he has been with us. It's heartbreaking to think that what he is going through now could have been prevented by better care from us, his humans, if only we had known.

Thanks for reading Ziggy's story, and I look forward to getting to know everyone here

Bec