benny55 said
Geez, you and Coco  have really been through  a rough time.  Give yourself credit for holding grit rogether and for staying focused on a solution.  I can only imagine  how hard that has  been, but you ARE going to get a solution!!

Another suggestion  in addition  to the Rehabilitation  Specialist (and I hope you can get an assessment done quickly), would be to get an assessment  from an animal Chiropractor if there is one available.   I think I'm correct in telling  you Paula, Warrior Nitro's hooman, had great success

So, before the surgery, there was NO indication  of neck/back pain whatsoever,  correct?  How quickly did that seem to start after the surgery?

I'm  gonna throw out something  really crazy since no one seems to know what's causing this.  Is it possible at all that there are some nerve endings  left "open", not closed off up in the shoulder area of the incision?  I can't think of the proper medical  term, but on rare ocassions surgeons  jave jad tomgo back in to deaden these nerves.  

I know you must be incredibly frustrated and you need to get this figured out.  What happens when you massage up and down her neck/shoulder area, her spine/back, etc?  Any tension  show up in certain  areas?

Hang in there.  Coco is very lucky to have you advocate  for her.

Hugs

Sally and Alumni Happy Hannah and Merry Myrtle and Frankie too!

  

Hi Sally and family! Thank you so much for your kind words. We just want her to be pain free. 

thank you for your reply. We haven't tried chiro, only acupuncture so far which we only got two session and we stopped to make sure there wasn't any underlying issues (cancer in vertebrate). 

Also before surgery we didn't have any issues. Our vet says that she might had issues prior but due to weight shift, now it might've affected more significantly. We cant tell for sure. But no, we didn't see any issues with it prior. 

We did think of the option of nerves, our surgeon says most likely due to disc issues from her examination of the neck and found sensitivity and because she drags her rear legs slightly. But that's due to the foot test she did where you see the reaction of the dog flipping it's foot back to place. Not sure of the right terminology. I tried it at home, and it was not that significant. Also gabapentin makes her a little sloppy and she is senior (just turn 10) and this surgery is taking a toll on her. 

I will ask my vet about nerves left open. She also has hemoclips, I believe it is due because they lost her artery during surgery. She required blood transfusion. Or perhaps it's normal for amputation. We thought at first it may be the hemoclips but surgeon said no. Although who knows. 

We cant tell if it was right away from surgery or developed after. She always had some kind of pain after surgery. It could've been the same issue. It's difficult to say. Greyhounds are pretty stoic too. 

We just got her on Metacam today. So hopefully and NSAID will help her over night. 

benny55 said
Just wanted you to know I have emailed a long time  valued member, Ingrid.  She has been owned by several Greyhounds and is extremely  knowledgeable and up to date about all types of issues they may face.  And she's  had lots of dogs with a lot of unique "issues".  

In the meantime, try and get more specifics (maybe even copies of her records) as to what exactly  went on during surfery, especially  related to the artery  and hemoclips "issue". 

I'm  sure your frustration  level is off the charts.  And I'm  also sure this is harder on uoj than Coco.  Hopefully  we can get to a point soon with ALL good days!  Hang in there!  You are an outstanding  advocate for your girl!

Hugs

Sally and Alumni Happy Hannah and Merry Myrtle and Frankie too!

  

Hi thank you so much for looking into this. I will try getting some info surgeon. All they said is that they lost her artery during surgery, and she lost some blood. She was okay and needed a transfusion. And she has 8 hemoclips now. When the surgeon palpitated her recently, she did noticed close to incision a sensitive spot which my acupuncture vet sensed it as well. But she eventually shifted to the neck area closer to head ruling out hemoclips. And said it's most likely to do with disc issues. We did xrays and report said it doesn't see any cancer or anything abnormal. However it cannot rule out disc or cancer as xrays do not pick up everything. So she told us to go to see a neurologist. Now the problem is that we have a dog with cancer. We wanted to remove pain in her paw so she can have comfortable life for whatever time she has left with us. It didn't turn out this way. We don't want to cause her more discomfort with more ct scans or MIRs. We even ruled out chemo because we didn't want to be bring her to vet and leave her half a day there fore treatment. We even ask our vet to do home visits because we don't want to cause her more stress. She is not that type of dog, she doesn't do well with vets or new places and very skittish as a greyhound is. And neurologist wont be able to tell us what is wrong with her unless with do more testing. On top of that, how can we have MIR done when she has metal hemoclips? 

As few mentioned earlier, it could be disc that perhaps were took a strain with becoming a tripawd. Perhaps there was an issue that was unknown prior to surgery. Who knows, she didn't show other than limping from her cancer, but she never yelped either, even which cancer in her paw without any pain meds as we didn't know. We could try physio, although I don't see her doing well. She'll probably have a heart attack before even stepping into the pool. At this time we are trying to salvage her kidney, we're on second meds since first didn't work. She has proteurina which we are trying to fix.