Hi all

It's been a while. Life's been hectic but Harry and I have settled nicely into tripawd-ism, and I wanted to pop by and do an update. This past Saturday was six months since Harry became "Three-legged Harry" (what my four year old nephew calls him now:P) and I often forget that he's any different. He is less eager to get up on high things, and consistently uses his stairs for his preferred places, and is slower than he was (unless he's running), but otherwise he's just Harry - which is so great to be able to say! I think it took me longer to recover, emotionally, than it took him to physically recover. 

We had our first road-trip back to my parents' a couple of weeks ago, and he was fine with the trip and thrilled to his his "grandparents" as usual. It was a bit tough for them at first, but they were blown away by how well he gets around (it took him a few tries to figure out how to manage the backs of their squishy couches - which has always been a favourite spot at theirs - but he was a pro by the time we were ready to leave. Ditto for the stairs to the basement).

He is FINALLY beginning to shed some weight, after we switched to Weruva foods - they're not "diet" but the ones we're using are lower calorie than the diet one from the vet and the ingredients seem like actual food-things. 

I have noticed the occasional twitch in the muscles on his right (amputated) side lately, but I'm assuming this is just a muscle spasm thing...

And now for some pictures 🙂

(Don't worry, he stays in his cage while we're driving. We just stopped for a lunch and pee break - it's a LONNNG drive)

Wow, Holly. Thanks for the information! 

Thought I'd come back with a bit of an update..I'm not sure whether this is the best place for it, but here I am! 

Harry started walking funny (funnier) a few weeks ago, and moving around less. He was very unhappy when I gave his remaining front paw a squish to test things out. So it was back to the vet. I worked really hard to prepare myself for this being the end because I didn't want to be blind sided again...and ended up getting really upset over what is seemingly not much, at this point. lol. Harry had to be sedated again for X-rays and they got two good angles on his full front arm, and it's all clear as far as cancer goes (phew) and there was no breakage (also, phew...I can't imagine doing a cast on his one remaining foreleg), but some swelling around one of his toes showed up and the vet diagnosed a soft tissue injury, likely the result of catching his toe and twisting it, or landing awkwardly, or something along those lines. She gave us four days of metacam and he was immediately better - and SO happy to be back from the vet with all the limbs he went in with, after the sedation wore off! lol...he was rolling around and playing, and rubbing himself all over everything, purring like mad. 

He seemed back to normal after the painkillers, with some weird behaviours that I attributed to moving and then the heat (because it's in the mid-30s where we are now)....but...sigh...in the last few days I've noticed him limping again (limping, ish...walking kind of crooked, very slow, VERY reluctant to move around, to the point that he's not racing to his food dish as he usually does whenever anyone goes into the kitchen, never mind meal time). So I spoke with my vet, now long distance, and she prescribed another full week of metacam and as much rest as possible. There are a lot more physical challenges where we are at the moment. His litter box was in the basement and there are limited aids to him getting up and down places (I'm at my parents' for a coupleof months and can't redecorate their house!), plus he did a bit of reckless crawling around the car when we took breaks during our drive, so I'm hoping he just re-injured or prevented proper healing of the same sprain-or-whatever-it-was and that we'll be able to heal him up properly now. 

Does anyone have experiences with soft tissue damage in a remaining limb? Can you share what your recovery time was like? I assume it would be longer than usual on a tripawd because they're not able to favour the absent limb...but I'm not fully sure how long it should take anyway. My vet said he should be feeling better within a couple of days and nothing beyond that. He was. But then he wasn't. It's only been two weeks since we first went to the vet. We've been at my parents' for almost a week of that. It doesn't seem outlandish that he would still be healing, especially considering the extra challenges he's had. 

I'm not sure what else it could be, given the clear x-rays, unless there was a teeny tiny cancer speck that has rapidly grown??? Is that possible? 

I really hope I don't need to take him back for more tests. It's the worst experience. Not to mention that between his amputation, meds, and check-ups...and some teeth he had out last Summer, I'm well over $5000 in vet expenses this year >.< 

Here hs is resting up, this afternoon, poor boy: