Thanks for all the great words of support!!!  Briston continues to do well.  Today was a pretty normal day for us around here, me running around getting kids where they needed to go and running errands and him snoring away in his favorite spot!  🙂

We have had a couple of super brief incidents of what I think may be phantom pain .  I have failed my beautiful dog and did not ask enough questions, nor did I KNOW enough to ask some questions of our vet.  So while over all I think it's gone well, there is one major thing that I am hoping does not end up being a major issue.  Briston only has tramadol as an RX, along with two antibiotics.  No gabepentin (hope I got that right).  And after today's incidents, I am wondering if I need to talk to the vet clinic.  But is it too late to start it?  I know you aren't vets!! 🙂  And not only is he only on Tramadol, but the vet felt he should be able to be off the T by now. I do have enough to get through the weekend, but it's going to require another call/convo with the clinic to get more, as I read here about not going off meds for two weeks.  I am not looking forward to that.

I've been totally jinxed with this whole situation with Briston's leg.  Normally we've had good communication with this clinic and everything has always gone super smooth.  Somehow with his leg we've ended up with issue after issue from tests not coming back from the lab on time to playing phone tag for a week and so on and so forth.  I'm so tired of the issues.  It's not because of any one person/lab in my opinion, just a lot of bad luck stuff.  So it's been a taxing situation on that end and I can't believe I'm faced with yet another issue.  :/

But he's doing great and even with my failure, I think we're going to make it through ok. 

Here he is laying in his favorite spot, just hanging out today.  He's continued to do well when he moves around, but isn't too mobile, in my opinion.  All systems are working, both the intake and the output! 🙂  He had a great night last night, none of the restlessness we had the night before.

Wow I knew I had missed a day, didn't realize it's been a few days!!!  Thank you for all the reassuring support.  

Briston continues to do well.  It's been a good weekend for him.  We haven't had any more phantom pains, and Sally's description was exactly what I thought they were and what he did.

Briston is still going up the stairs once a night to sleep in our room.  He's still understandably awkward about the up portion of it.  Although last night he seemed to be getting the hang of it.  He usually rests on the landing before heading up the second flight, but last night he paused standing up and then went all the way up the second flight!  Last night I thought he might not join us upstairs, but in the end he decided to give it a go.  We ask him if he wants to go up with us and he usually "tells" us either by just laying there and staring at us or getting up and walking with us.  It's so funny, I've never had a dog be so clear in his communication in that way, he's always done that re: going outside, and now it is translating to whether he wants to do other things with us.  It's nice that he already had a clear way to say no to us. 

He is much stronger going out to potty, going all the way out, pottying and then coming all the way back in without having to lay down once!  And all systems are a go, intake and output are all working normally! 

He's pretty comfortable on the slick tile and concrete we have, we do still have the original runners down, but he's going off of them all the time now.

He is still wearing his cone of shame when we are not around, as he's still licking the staples.  He is also a bit sore today in his walking movements, which I think is from getting used to hopping instead of walking.  I am calling the vets tomorrow to see if we can get him on something like carprofen and making an appointment for his staples to come out!!! 

I can't believe it's been a week, that flew by so fast!  Of course it helps that Briston has done so amazingly well!! We had the odd hiccup here and there, where I worried about his pain level or whether this was what was meant by loosing his sparkle, but so far he's just done amazingly well.  I will be happy to get through this coming week and not be worrying that every twitch means he's not medicated enough!

Oh and the boy (Jayden) came home last night and loved on his dog!!!  When we went to pick him up last night he said "Hi, how's Briston?" all in one breath!  I am so glad for his sake that Briston is doing well.  Jayden gave Briston a big hug last night before he went to bed and I asked the boy how he was doing with seeing the dog as a three leg dog and with the staples and such.  Jayden said he was doing ok with it.  So I am happy about that.

Having computer issues, so no picture tonight. 🙁 

Jerry- sadly no pictures of the reunion....oops!!  And I am still having computer issues with pictures, so again no new pictures. I have them and I will get them up eventually!!!

Briston is doing super well today! I am so thrilled with that, as you will see why below!

The last few days have been rough for both Briston and I. The amount of tramadol that I was trying to take him down to was not cutting it and he had totally lost his sparkle because of the underlying pain he was in. He wasn't moving as much and was just miserable.

I called the vet office on Monday to schedule his staple removal and see about getting more meds and possibly adding carprofen to his meds as some of his pain seemed to be muscle pain from adjusting to movement and I thought the anti-inflamatory would be a good idea. He really hasn't had a time where I felt like he was overdoing it, he's pretty much going out to potty and occasionally getting up and moving to another spot or checking out what we are doing and then laying back down. So I felt like he just needed some more pain relief to get over the hump of adjusting to his new gate, not that he was over doing it. And that a NSAID would be better than a narcotic, although I guess from what I learned yesterday, that part doesn't necessarily apply.

The office call did not go well, first they tried to tell me the day I wanted to bring him in would have been day 10 and it was too early, but it really was going to be day 13 (today), so I had to correct the tech on that and she didn't appreciate that, but it was the truth, what could I do about that? I did say if she felt I was trying to schedule to early, I was happy to bring him in a few days later. But she grudgingly agreed the day I was asking for was valid and they had a time slot available. Then I tried to explain to her that I needed more pain meds and possibly different pain meds and she was very short with me and only heard me say he was doing well overall, not the part where I felt like he was super sore with his muscles. She wanted me to wait until Thursday (this was Monday) when he was coming in for staple removal to talk to the vet about meds, even though I told her if I increased the frequency of his dosages to compensate for his soreness, as she suggested, I would run out on Tuesday.

She finally agreed that she would talk to the vet and call me back on Tuesday. I never heard from her or the vet on Tuesday. So I made the decision to change vets....it was so hard, I love this clinic and have always had amazing service and they have done well for my animals. I have another close, picky friend who also uses this clinic and has/had cancer dogs/cats and loves this clinic. But I was done with the communication issues and the lack of response to Briston being in pain. Based on her attitude I would not be surprised to learn she never even told my vet about my concerns. I have already played phone tag with the vet for two weeks over Briston's test results and options, delaying moving forward with his treatment, so we ended up waiting four weeks from X-rays to surgery on his amp, between the two weeks of phone tag and the two weeks before he could be put on the schedule. So I knew it wasn't going to help to call and insist on my talking to him personally.

I picked a clinic I had gone to three years ago, before I got involved with a rescue organization here and started using their vet because of their prices/and having all animals going to one place. But they've changed over the last two years and I no longer use them for my personal animals. (I had chosen the clinic I was using with Briston based on their experiences with reptiles as we have a corn snake that needed care and they did great and I was happy with the clinic, so switched to them, we've used them for two years for various personal/rescue animals with no issues) So I went back to the original clinic that I used three years ago, when we first moved here, and had always had good experiences with and they were amazing!!! Plus they are 5 mins from me, not the 45 mins I was driving to the other vet. And the time to get back and forth has also played into issues with getting meds/visits with the previous clinic. It was AMAZING to drive 5 mins yesterday!!! So amazing.

I called yesterday morning and explained that I had a post amp dog that I felt was not getting the pain management he needed and they got him in at 3pm yesterday. They would have gotten him much sooner, but unfortunately I couldn't with my schedule. Oh my gosh I am crying while I write this!! The vet was so amazing! She was so patient with me and my stress over his pain and was text book right down the line of what I have read here as standard treatment for post amp meds! She immediately agreed that he needed way more pain management and then she was like "hey since your are here and his incision looks great, lets take those staples out now and save you another trip in here!!!" I had felt like they were ready to come out myself, I was soooo happy she agreed and we were able to get it all over with in one trip for Briston!!! And good thing we did it yesterday, because parts of the incision were really well healed and it took more to get the staples out, poor guy. So if we had waited even longer it would have been worse!

When we got home I gave him all three meds right away! Not quite at maximum dose,(they gave me a range) but on the higher end as I wanted him completely out of pain, since he'd been dealing with it for days at that point! Once the meds kicked in, he was OUT!! I think it was a combo of the sedation affect, but also just that his body was so relieved to be out of pain. He slept hard for a few hours, not even flinching while we were going in and out past him. I was so happy! I was a little concerned he may be too out of it to come upstairs, but I knew he'd be ok if he stayed downstairs, as he occasionally has choosen to do that pre-amp. But when my husband came to bed late last night, Briston came with him! He said he did fine getting up the stairs.

This morning I had a chipper, happy energetic Saint Bernard on my hands!!! It was so awesome to see his full on body wiggle!!! Haven't seen that in weeks! It's truly a sight in a dog that big with that much loose skin! LOL! At breakfast I backed down on the med dose a tad bit and he seems to be doing really well today. Up much more (still not over doing it in my opinion, although we are probably past needing to worry over much about that) and wanting to know what's going on and moving so much freer and just happy. He is snoring away right now, so good to hear him sleeping hard enough to snore again!! He hasn't really truly slept hard in several days because of the pain. It wasn't horrible, pacing/panting type of pain, just that low level, you know something is not right and they can't quite get comfortable pain.

They sent me home with two weeks of all three meds at full on doses, no worries about rationing it at all! And said that of course he may need it even longer and to just keep them informed on how he was doing!! What a difference in attitude!!! The vet was all about keeping him comfortable and talked about how important his quality of life was and that there was no reason to be in a hurry to get him off any of the meds. Of course there are slight liver concerns with carprofen, but with his prognosis, we probably didn't need to be too worried about the long term issues, but that of course we would monitor that and take it a day at a time with it all. It was such a relief!!! She basically couldn't wait for me to stop explaining why I thought he needed meds before she jumped in and was like, of course we need to get him on all three of these meds and of course he's still in pain!! She was very polite about it, but she totally disagreed with how Briston's pain management had been handled and I could tell she couldn't wait to get him started on all three meds.

And the best is yet to come!!!!

The VET called me today. Not one of their office people, but the VET called and talked to me about how Briston is doing! Not the same vet I had yesterday, but she had read the notes and was very knowledgable about what we were doing and about what the norm is for his type of case! After the run around I had trying to get a hold of our previous vet, what a change! Pretty sure if I need to talk to one of them, I am going to hear from them!! I am totally used to office staff calling to check on a dog, but I don't think I have ever had the actual vet do a follow up call like that!! She said she would leave a post it for the other vet about how awesome Briston was doing and how much I appreciated her care yesterday.

And the second vet said everything the first vet said, which you all already know, that he may be on these meds for awhile and there is no reason to take him off them in a certain time frame. To take it a day at a time and of course reduce the meds as we can, but to be guided by him! And that he may have a bad day and need them again and that wasn't a big deal. And just keep them posted on how he was doing.

So as you can tell, I am so much happier with our situation and looking forward to not driving 45 mins for every vet visit! If you read this far, thanks for listening.  This community is amazing and I really, really appreciate the comments and the help and support!! I told the vet about this community and she was impressed with quality and accuracy of my knowledge from this site.