Wow!! I feel  like I am reading about my dog. Our stories are very similar. He did great after surgery. He is getting around wonderfully. But unless I’m actively engaging him, he just lays around and sleeps. He never did that before. He’s never been a food motivated dog, so he’s not eating much at all now. He eats every other day, maybe a couple of cups of food. He doesn’t even sit and stare at me when I eat which is completely out of character. I don’t feel like he’s drinking enough either but he obviously is because he is peeing OK. I know he would eat human food if I offered it to him but I don’t want to start him down that path. He’s never gotten much of it in his lifetime and has always a good healthy dog food.

Sparky had his right front leg amputated on July 11 after a year long remission from paw cancer. Since the cancer did come back after his tumor excision last year, we decided to amputate. I’m now starting to think we did the wrong thing. He just doesn’t seem to be himself.

 Like you, I have a family member who is a teacher. Our daughter came and stayed with him for the first two weeks to help with his transition. My husband and I both work, so it was a great help to have her here. And he loves her a lot so he was happy as well. But even with  her being here, he was still pretty lethargic. We also cut his pain medicine down to once a day and he was also on anti-anxiety medicine, which we cut down to once a day. Last night we decided to not give him any medicine, to see if he would perk up today. But he is still pretty tired and only interested in sleeping.  Before surgery he was such an active dog. He is turning six years old in the beginning of August. And other than a little bit a gray around his mouth, you would have thought he was still a puppy. That is why he needed the anti-anxiety medicine, because he is so active and he needed to rest in order to heal. I just don’t understand why he seem so uninterested and depressed now.

I will back up a bit and say, if I offered to take him outside for a walk in the woods, he would be happy and more like himself. He wants to take off and practically run down the path of the trails around our house and you would never realize that he just had a leg amputation. But we have to be careful because he does push himself too hard and wants to go and go and then when we get home, he can’t move for several hours because he’s exhausted.  But it does seem like the only time he acts like himself, is when he’s outside. Before surgery, he always wanted to be outside. Even though he is an inside dog, he would pester us to death to be outside. So I think some of his depression is related to the fact that he can’t just come in and out of the house as he wishes. But there is nothing that I can do about that right now.

 His incision is healed but on his right back leg where his IV was, he has a sore that showed up about two weeks after surgery. It actually showed up the day his sutures came out. The area was excoriated from tape immediately after surgery and it looked like it had healed up well but then there’s small hole opened up. So we have had to keep that area clean and dry and apply antibiotic ointment twice a day and keep him in the cone of shame to keep him from licking it.

I just wonder when or if my Sparky will ever act like himself again? The vet said now that his sutures are out he can resume normal activity but he doesn’t seem interested in normal activity unless he is taking a walk.