Caring for a Three Legged Dog or Cat
Tripawds is your home to learn how to care for a three legged dog or cat, with answers about dog leg amputation, and cat amputation recovery from many years of member experiences.
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O MY GOSH! A paw and leg!!????
Paws down - that's the best!
Comet ate a glove as a puppy! "spit it out, spit it out...no, no, no".... gulp.
Peroxide worked like magic! I always have peroxide on-hand just for that purpose.
Comet - 1999 to 2011
She departed us unexpectedly January 23, 2011 at the age of 12 1/2.
She was born with a deformed front leg and a tripawd all of her life.
Oh, I also remembered that we once thought my Nakita ate Tylenol PM - the bottle was open and pills were on the floor, but apparently she either didn't like the taste or she got distracted before she ate any of them.
And Rio chewed on some laurel leaves -- luckily her dad gave her some milk to drink when he first realized what she ate. She still was pretty sick for an entire day.
We've had to call the poison control hotline a few times with our girls...
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~ ~ Rio ~ ~ |
Bernie bin Laden ate a camera once, as detailed here.
I've been doing a lot more hiking with our dogs recently in a few of our county's wilderness parks, and have also noticed that Bernie is developing a truly repulsive fascination with horse turds. It's getting to the point where we can't pass a pile of road apples without the nasty little beggar making a lunge for them. And every now and then he actually succeeds if I don't yank him back in time. The grabbing is bad enough, but the chewing!!! Oh God, the chewing…
Yummmm... horse poo!!! Our girls leave the horse poo, but cat poo, now that's a delicacy. And raccoon poo -- we like to wear that as a hat.
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~ ~ Rio ~ ~ |
Wow, you guys are making our dogs look SO good. Abby never ate anything weird. She liked to suck on our socks. (We called her the sock sucker.) But she never ate one. She was a super model though, so no way was she going to ingest an unnecessary calorie...
Bailey also thought cat poo was divine. So gross. I remember once a neighbor came out and yelled at us (real nice, huh?) cuz he thought she was standing on his lawn to poo. I was like, "Dude, she's doing you a favor! She's cleaning up the damn cat poo!"
The worst thing she did was get into her bag of food when she was a pup. We came home late, past her dinner time, and we came in all apologetic "we're so sorry we're late! Here's your dinner!" We didn't notice that the closet door was open... When she waddled toward her bowl and then turned her head away (something that NEVER happens when you have a beagle) we knew something was wrong. Then we noticed her BULGING sides. We were too new at dog ownership to realize it could have been super serious so we didn't take her to the vet; we just kept taking her outside to walk/poop it off. (Of course we lived in an apartment at the time on the 11th floor, so kind of a pain...) She pooped about 7 times that night. But, we'd always thought she would eat til she killed herself - so at least we learned that night that she had the sense to say "when."
Abby: Aug 1, 2009 – Jan 10, 2012. Our beautiful rescue pup lived LARGE with osteosarcoma for 15 months – half her way-too-short life. I think our "halflistic" approach (mixing traditional meds + supplements) helped her thrive. (PM me for details. I'm happy to help.) She had lung mets for over a year. They took her from us in the end, but they cannot take her spirit! She will live forever in our hearts. She loved the beach and giving kisses and going to In-N-Out for a Flying Dutchman. Tripawds blog, and a more detailed blog here. Please also check out my novel, What the Dog Ate. Now also in paperback! Purchase it at Amazon via Tripawds and help support Tripawds!
One night, long before his osteosarcoma diagnosis, Yoda went kinda crazy. Never found out why. He wasn't the type to swallow inedible/inorganic things for fun. I was half asleep at the time, so not sure I'm not forgetting something and can't remember the order. But he woke me up, very much wanting to go outside. So I let him. Then realized he was eating long pieces of branches of the green-needled bushes (I don't know plants), so I made him come in. He licked the floors obsessively and before I knew it (this was in the middle of the night and I hadn't completely awoken still) he gulped down one, maybe two plastic bags. I kept thinking he as going to throw up, because he was acting like he was going to before during and after he gulped down all this crazy stuff. He didn't though, and I'm so embarrassed to admit that I then fell back asleep. When I awoke, I called the vet in a panic. Dog bless hydrogen peroxide. That's all they told me to do - give him hydrogen peroxide. I did, and amazingly, it wasn't too late and those branches and plastic bags came back up. Yoda didn't even get seen by a vet. Which, in retrospect was also incredibly stupid of me (but then, they didn't recommend I bring him in either - bizarre!). As far as I know, no ill effects after that.
Yoda&Mom united: 9/5/06 …….… Yoda&Leg separated: 6/5/09……… Yoda&Leg reunited: 10/14/09 ……… ……………….………….………….……. Yoda&Mom NEVER separated! …………………….….……....….…… Though Spirit Yoda currently free-lances as a rabbit hunting instructor for tripawds nationwide
OMD, I just remembered this: Shortly after I got Rio, we moved to our current location. At that time, we were in the process of building the house here, and we were living in a travel trailer. We built a dog pen for the girls to hang out in when we were busy or gone, but occasionally there would be a jail break.
One day we came home from being out and about, and Rio was loose. She was still just a baby, and I kind of freaked a bit when I saw her running up the driveway. I was picturing all the hazards of a puppy roaming around unsupervised. I stopped the car, and walked over towards her. She had something white and fuzzy-looking hanging out of her mouth. As she got closer to me, I realized it was a chicken leg, feathers and all. Then I really freaked!!! I immediately thought, holy crap, my sweet, adorable puppy is a chicken-killer!!! She could have gotten shot!!! Later we figured out that an eagle or hawk or perhaps a coyote must have dropped the chicken carcass on our property and she just found it.
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~ ~ Rio ~ ~ |
Roman ate a PILE, like 10, steak juice covered paper towels at a family BBQ without anyone seeing and barfed them up that evening, I thought he ate a pair of pantyhose!?!?!?! That's what they looked like when they came up. He also willingly ate a bunch of raw , fresh cranberries once , very tart! But he liked them.
Rio's "chicken" reminded me of once when Roman found a wounded pigeon in a friends yard and came running over playing with it , ahh I felt horrible for the poor bird, felt bad for yelling at Roman too. Had to put the pigeon out of its misery. Circle of life I suppose. At least he didn't eat it. Avoided the dreaded poultry bones.
On the way to the vet a few weeks ago Spencer threwup in my car. He had eaten a littlest petshop toy (for little girls) that was wrapped in fabric. Yeah, I threw it away. A few weeks after that he ate about 5 ounces of a milk chocolate bar - apparently that is OK for his size (called the vet right away).
Oh, and the doberman I had in high school ate my then boyfriend's class ring. I couldn't find it and told my parents that I was positive I had set it on the counter. Our dog had a habit of quickly eating anything he could reach on the counter, just assuming it must be food. We started thinking that had to have been what happened. Sure enough, my dad found it a few days later when it had "worked its way through". YUCK! ( I didn't wear it again.
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Jac and Angel Spencer. Spencer was 5.25 years old. He fought a grade 3 fibrosarcoma, started on his shoulder. Left front leg amputated in August 2011. 15 weeks of chemo finished 12/22/11 (mytox and adria). Lung mets found on x-rays 12/28/11. Started carboplatin 1/6/12. Went to Heaven on 2/27/12. I miss him like crazy every day. See his blog here: http://spencer.tripawds.com/
I had a german shepherd mix that like to let me know he didn't appreciate my leaving him by chewing up some shoes.....which at the time was hard on a single girl"s budget.....but not as hard as the day he ate the entire arm off of my living room couch! He had a whole lot of pound pup crazy but he was the most loyal fella I knew and I miss him everyday!
Let's see....
Two foot long tack strip (demolished the carpet, pulled up the tack strip, ate the tack strip and spit out the tacks);
A huge chuck/corner of the kitchen cabinet;
Zipper from a dog bed (which is apparently zinc and toxic, but he threw it up w/out a trip to the e-vet);
The entire tongue from Greg's leather Timberland boot (found the shredded boots - so demolished we didn't realize that anything was actually missing until we found the entire tongue in a pile of poop in the yard a few days later);
The entire back of our couch (they got under the top cushion that would flip up, tore it from the underside and unstuffed it - since the tear was on the bottom, it just look like someone deflated the cushion but it looked like it snowed in our living room). Took almost a week before we stopped seeing stuffing in the yard.
Other than the zipper we never knew which one caused all the damage b/c they were littermates and we would come home to find damage and two very remorseful looking pups.
Zeus was a Husky mix diagnosed with Osteosarcoma at age 11. A visible lung met and suspicious spot on his liver meant a poor prognosis-six weeks was our vet's best guess. We decided to fight for our boy and his right front leg was amputated on 12/1/11. We did six rounds of chemo, changed his diet and spoiled him completely rotten. We were blessed with 10 great months after diagnosis. Against the odds, the lung met remained a single met and grew very little over those months. A wonderful furbaby with the most gentle spirit, he fought with a strength that we never imagined he possessed. We have no regrets...
http://zeuspod......pawds.com/
OMD, these are all so crazy! And making me appreciate my pups discriminating tastes so much more!
(I did remember though from the chicken story that Abby once ate a bird. She caught it in our backyard - not sure if it was injured or what. Ate it all... feathers, beak, feet... But I never saw any, uh, after effects...)
A zipper???? What a nut!
Abby: Aug 1, 2009 – Jan 10, 2012. Our beautiful rescue pup lived LARGE with osteosarcoma for 15 months – half her way-too-short life. I think our "halflistic" approach (mixing traditional meds + supplements) helped her thrive. (PM me for details. I'm happy to help.) She had lung mets for over a year. They took her from us in the end, but they cannot take her spirit! She will live forever in our hearts. She loved the beach and giving kisses and going to In-N-Out for a Flying Dutchman. Tripawds blog, and a more detailed blog here. Please also check out my novel, What the Dog Ate. Now also in paperback! Purchase it at Amazon via Tripawds and help support Tripawds!
Good grief Zeus-- I think that you must be part lab...
Scout's lab buddy Jackson and his sister Emma once spent the afternoon ripping the exterior of their mom's house apart-- they tore off every single cedar shake on the back of the house up to five feet high. Jackson also ate his mom's entire softball glove with absolutely no ill effects; not even a burp.
Scout: January 31, 2002 to November 7, 2011
Scout's diagnosis was "poorly differentiated sarcoma"; amputation 1/11/2011. Scout enjoyed 9 fantastic years on 4 legs and 9 glorious months on 3 legs. If love alone could have saved you…
My girls decided the fake holly berries I had on my Christmas tree this year were the most delicious things ever. They ate at least half of my ornaments (all the ones they could reach) in the time it was up. Of course, the ornaments themselves probably weren't that bad for them, just Styrofoam balls covered in red paint, though I did come home to multiple piles of vomited Styrofoam balls. The worst part though was that the paint combined with saliva became very sticky, and so they both had flecks of red paint stuck to them for the entire holiday season. From across the room, I would look up, catch a glimpse of red paint in someone's fur, think "Oh my goodness why are you bleeding!?!", jump up to check it out, and then realize it was just the paint. This happened over and over again (OK, maybe I'm a little over protective). They were really in the Christmas spirit, I guess!
Also, anything and everything found in the cat box is a delicacy in my house. Both girls have super sized giant dog lips, so they always get caught in the act because their lips get coated with cat litter. Yuck!
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