I 'walled' Maggie off in the livingroom with an x-pen.  Meaning I used the x-pen as a wall as my house has an open floor plan.  That way she was on the livingroom RUG and not on hardwood floors.  I'll forewarn you, the first two weeks could be HELL.  It was for Maggie and I.  But she could be great in a day or two as well.  Goes both ways around here….

Tracy, Maggie's Mom

For what it's worth…Our experience was the opposite. Isabelle was up & active in less than 48 hours post op. I did not confine her, because she was managing  the four stairs into my bedroom as soon as she got home. She is an independant soul & I decided very quickly (after I tried to lay down with her, because I was tired & she acted like I was crazy!) it would be best to let her figure things out ASAP. I too have hardwood floors. I put Power Paws socks on her & the traction they provided gave her confidence. Of course, she fell, but was able to quickly get up & learned how to pivot & change direction pretty quickly. I took on on short walks the first evening home. She walked down the stairs to the outside, but was & still is carried up-this because of spinal arthritis, not amputation.

I do think some of her success had to do with analgesia choice. A discussion prior to surgery is well worth the time. I was not in favor of tramadol, unless needed for breakthrough pain (fortunately, neither was the surgeon). Isabelle had a fentanyl patch for 5 days, eliminating the the peaks & valleys & instead providing steady pain control. I didn't want to waste valuable recovery time chasing pain or nausea, nor did I want her in an artificial narcotic sleep, only to wake up when the drug wore off, in pain I restarted her metacam, I believe, on POD#3. She also had acupuncture POD#2 & 4.

Everyone recovers differently, but so much of your dog's reaction is dependant on your own. It may be hard to see them struggle, but you'll all get through it faster than you think.

Happy New Year everyone! 

So here we sit, the night before Sierra gets her right front leg ampawtated to remove what is strongly supspected to be osteosarcoma (initial biopsy show suspicious cells and pathologist recommended second biopsy).  I can't really explain the delay for treatment since she was diagnosed several weeks ago other than we got caught up in a whirlwind of questions and back and forth with several vets trying to sort out our final plan of attack.  Have been reading all we can to get us up to speed so we are prepared as well.

In typical labradork fashion, she continues to bounce off the walls and run around the yard guarding her territory from the on slaught of ground squirrels and rabbits wishing to invade her territory.  I guess they will be getting a reprieve of the next couple of weeks during her recovery.  I will do my best to protect her territory while she heals!

Between being the sweetest, goofiest, most loving, and spoiled rotten little princess of a dog and the kindness and graciousness of all of you here, we are hitting the ground running on three paws now!  We still are not sure what sort of chemotherapy options we might have because we will not know for certain until the final biopsy comes back after the ampawtation.  What we have done, though, is start her on some herbs for now.  We are thinking about mixing in vitamin c IV therapies with the chemo but not sure yet.  I understand that the oncologist may not like the idea since the whole purpose of chemo is to lower the antioxidants in the body. 

Can any of you share any experiences or point me to an old post some where that might have talked about vitamin c or herbs?  I am also trying to catch up on chemo posts to learn as much as we can.

Hi Burkbr,

                 We are now 10 days past Io having his front leg removed and so thought I would add our experiences.

Io was in the vets for 3 days after the operation and the vets actually did the first work with getting him on his feet.

Once we got him home, the first 24 hours after getting him home were the hardest for us all – he was still very shaky from the drugs and was all over the place menatlly and physically but he was able to get around (for a drugged up dog that had a leg amputated 3 days before he couldn't hop out of the vets fast enough when we went to get him !).  He did seem to be very thirsty when we got him home – he emptied 3 large bowls of water in a short time which then seemed to give him stomach ache, all of which made for a very unpleasent hour or so before he settled down. 

48 hours after coming home he was in much better shape, I honestly think his major problem was actually us being too keen to physically support him rather than let him work on finding his new balance. He was up and ready for his dinner and had worked out all his balance for toilet functions (we had expected a couple of  "accidents"  but in fact we had none at all).

We have hard floors and so purchased some large foam interlocking tiles that have covered our living room floor and we restricted him to this room at first but we are now letting him take his first tentative steps elsewhere.  I should say that keeping them in our living room was easy for us as this is where they have their beds.  Someone did sleep downstairs for the first two nights as he was very restless but after that we left him to it at night. 

The rate at which he has adapated is really quite amazing particulary since we were warned that it will be harder for him as a large dog to adapt.

Io did suffer with a few muscle spams in the last week which caused him some yelping but there is some brilliant information on here about how to help with this.  The only real problem with his movement seemed to be once he was healing and then went to lie down, he seemed to forget that he didn't have a leg/shoulder on that side and so would go down with a bit of a thump and a yelp but he seems to be working that out now.

Even in these difficult times there are some bright moments – Io has now adapated his way of asking to go to the toilet if he needs to go during the night, when he had 4 legs he would gently kick the door, obviously not an option with 3 legs so he now seems to do a kind of 3 legged tap dance to get our attention !!

We have not taken Io out for excercise at the moment (bored Dog ) and restricted his exercise to the garden. He will shortly be going out for the first time, we are not going for a walk as such but are planning to take him to a local park and let him get used to being out and about in public and build up his tripawd stamina slowly.  maybe will take some piccies and post later

Good luck !

Io and co