My pal Calpurnia has a question for you;
How long did your fur take to grow back after surgery?
Here is a photo of her, four months post op. Cali’s human, TC, says:
Cali only has fuzzy undercoat, but the longer guard hairs are few and far between. I wonder if it has something to do with the chemo she had before surgery? She doesn’t have much more fur than she did 4 weeks post op. I’d love to hear from others if they have had similarly slow regrowth. It doesn’t seem to bother her at all.
So tell us, how long did all of you tripawds take to get furry again? It took me about four months until my fur grew back.
They shaved so much of JD I hope it doesn’t take a long time to grow back his belly is shaved from the ultrasound pre op and half the front of his body is shaved 🙁
Honey lost her leg due to an accident, not disease. So this, and the fact that her fur is naturally ridiculously soft and plushy, so much so that it almost seems fake, probably helped her grow it back more quickly–fully covered with both short and longer hairs in five weeks–than some of her tripawd friends.
I also was able to massage the shaved areas (she’d had Fentanyl patches on her shoulder for pain control in addition to the shaved area on her hind leg that was amputated) and once the staples were removed, also along her incision, which she appreciated very much as it was quite itchy as it healed. I did this to help stimulate blood flow and healing and because she found it very calming and comforting. Honey was not fortunate enough to be able to recuperate in a home but had to do so at first at a vet clinic and then in a boarding kennel. Perhaps it also helped her fur to grow back faster, I don’t know. She is beautiful to me no matter what and I pray we can find her a forever home as wonderful and loving as she is, and soon.
Pawesome advice, thank you for sharing it and THANK YOU for taking this sweet girl into your home. We have our paws crossed that she gets adopted ASAP.
Glad to see Major isn’t the only one. I won’t worry so much about it. 7 weeks down and only the soft stuff. No guard hairs even thinking about coming in yet.
Rachel (Major’s mom)
Presley’s front left leg was amputated on 10/10/07 and 4 months her fur is very patchy. We tried one round of chemo but it made her really sick, so we decided not to continue with it. Near her neck, her hair has almost fully grown back, while in other areas her fur is fuzzy and patchy, or no fur has grown back at all. I’ve also noticed that her skin sometimes feel cold or hot in this furless area. She doesn’t seem to care about her fur, so I try not to focus on it too much.
Hey TC! Eisen’s hair is exactly the same as you described. His surgery was the first weekend in November and he has his undercoat and some of the other longer hairs. He has the added bonus though of having a bald spot (well 90%) that is on the top of his back. The funny thing is that it is the black hairs that are not growing as fast. Maybe it’s a pigment thing? Anyway…we DID NOT do chemo and are doing holistic remedies….so it might just be how the breed’s hair grows? Eisen is wearing a fleece jacket on cold days and a fleece lined snow coat on snowy days due to the bald spot on top.
Lalla’s hair took a couple of months to grow back, and the undercoat was very fuzzy – and grey. From what I gathered from her vet, canine type hair isn’t “used” to haircuts and responds slowly to regrowth.
My understanding is that chemo doesn’t usually affect dogs like it does humans and cause hair loss.
Albert (Canaan Dog) is double-coated and his fur grew in variably; it took 3-4 months (as I recall) for it to grow back more or less fully. Same pattern of undercoat first, guard hairs later.
The interesting thing in his case was that he still had a bald patch (about 2.5″ x 3″) right in front of the base of his tail for quite a while after the surrounding fur began growing back. I was mildly worried about it for a while, but I developed a hypothesis. I’ve noticed that when he sheds, there’s a distinct pattern to the process, starting on his thighs and moving up and forward. So my conjecture is that his fur doesn’t necessarily grow continuously, and it wasn’t time then for hair to grow where the bald spot was. Obviously a data sample of one proves nothing, but I thought it was an interesting idea.
I was actually wondering the same thing. Taylor had his amputation and got shaved on 11/6/07. Since then he’s had 3 chemo treatments. He’s a black lab, and getting a lot of peach-fuzz back, but no “fur” to speak of. I know that chemo tends to make humans lose their hair…maybe in dogs it doesn’t make them lose it, but makes it take forever to grow back? *shrug*
It took our dog, Riley, months to grow his hair back. He had his amputation in the fall, and in Dec. we took him with us on a cold MN afternoon to a tree farm to cut down our Christmas tree, and we think a small area got frostbitten 🙁 . That area took about 8 months to grow back!