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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hello all,
i havent posted in a while. I said goodbye to my golden who fought cancer for over two years and made it nine months as a tripod in September. It has not been easy and honestly my two other furkids are what keep me going. In august i adopted an about 8 month old tripod lab/pit mix. She is small, only 35 pounds and the color of a yellow lab. I had written about her before and she was featured as a recipient of payment for her physical therapy visit. Long story short.... she was found as a stray with a broken front leg that could not be saved. She was a full shoulder blade amputation on her left front leg. That was all done and healed before she came to me. When i got her i noticed that she had a deformed remaining front leg and after a physical therapy visit and a orthopedic surgeon visit it has been determined that it is most likely compensation from walking around with the broken leg but there is no intervention to fix it. She walks kinda hunched over and her leg is rotated in and she walks on the side of her paw. She gets around so it is what it is. Also when she came to me her amputation site had a skin flap that hung down. She had to have a hernia repair (most likely from a not good spay) so i had them revise her amputation site while she was under. The site looks good now however the whole area on her chest is cool to the touch. The rest of her will be normal dog warm but her chest/shoulder area is cool. The skin is pink and blanches so i know it has blood flow but as a nurse i do not like that it is cool. Skin should always be the same the temperature throughout your body unless something is wrong. Since adopting her i have also learned that she has moderate to severe pulmonary stenosis. She has no symptoms except i can feel a heart murmur just by touching her chest. She has no exercise restrictions and no medications at this time except for holistic supplements and the vet said to repeat the heart ultrasound in a year to see if it has gotten worse. The murmur should have nothing to do with the temperature of her skin but a dogs heart is more to the left side just like in humans and it is her front leg that was amputated. Maybe as a nurse i am just reading too much into it. My mom (who is a nurse as well) thinks that i look for things to be wrong. Maybe i do subconsciously because i feel like i didnt pick up my goldens nasal cancer soon enough and i didnt know she had a huge bone tumor in her leg until it snapped one day. I think about how much pain she was in (they say bone cancer is the most painful thing you can ever have) and i never noticed. She was a stoic dog but i still blame myself. So maybe i do read too much into everything now so i never miss anything again.
Guess i didnt keep it so short..... what i am asking is has anyone elses animals amputation site felt cool to touch even when the rest of the dog was warm?
You don't have to worry about keeping things short. We totally understand your worries. And as a nurse and former vet tech you have more than the average member here so if it helps to write out your worries, do it. Angel Abby is proud of her fearless mama and little Peanut (are you still calling her that?).
It's natural to blame ourselves for the things we didn't catch when it comes to our animals. And I think this happens even more among members of the health care professions. We see that a lot here. Being that animals don't speak our language, we have an extra tendency to put everything on our shoulders, even when it's not really rational to do it. I did, everyone does. In time your heart and head will come to an agreement and decide that you did the very best you could. Give yourself time, it hasn't been that long.
Meanwhile about Peanut's incision area. I can't say that I've heard of anyone mentioning this, usually it's a concern about a warm area. So my best advice is, ask your vet. Maybe the fact that she has a missing limb there means that blood and fluids in the circulatory system are going around the area? I dunno, just a totally wild guess. I'm not a vet as you can see!
Maybe you want to post in Ask a Vet and see what our Fairy Vet Mother Dr. Pam thinks. I'm curious about her take on this.
It's good to hear from you!
((((hugs))))
Tripawds Founders Jim and Rene
tripawds.com | tripawds.org | bemoredog.net | triday.pet
Thanks for all the love. Yes i still call her peanut. She is just the happiest dog ever and she loves her big brother. Even though most of the time he only tolerates her. He is 10 so he's an old grumpy man now. Somehow he got very old all of the sudden but maybe i had just been focused on abby over the past two years that i didnt notice that he was slowing down. He just had a dental and blood work and everything and he’s relatively healthy. He does have mast cell disorder and just had a skin growth come back as mast cell tumor. I did not have it staged and i am only holisticly treating him. No chemo or radiation. He is a nightmare at the vet. He has to go in a back door, i have to muzzle him and they have to inject him with a sedative just to examine him. I will not put him through extensive treatment. It is not in his best interest and if abby taught me anything it was that it has to be whats best for the dog not what is best for the owner. He is a happy healthy boy that still jumps around and acts like a nutty pitbull. Mast cell tumors spread to the spleen or liver but his bloodwork came back good so i just added a few holistic supplements and that is all i am doing.
I think i havent been posting or following the forums because it reminds me of abby. I miss her so much everyday and i still breakdown and cry everyday. I see her everywhere in my house and i hate looking at her empty “spot” on the rug in my bedroom. My mom got mad at me a few months ago because i told her that the night when abby went bad before i put her to sleep i tried to overdose her. I thought if i could just slow her breathing that she would just go to sleep and not wake up. When we put humans on morphine drips that is basically what we are doing. But she got mad because is told her that at one point i wanted to overdose myself and go with her. I didnt think i could go on without her. But then i looked at my other two dogs and thought how mad abby would be at me if i went to heaven with her. She was so stubborn and bossy and she would have said that i needed to stay to take care of carter and peanut. She would say carter is so dumb he wouldnt make it on his own. Lol. So obviously i didnt do it and ive never had that thought since but being a nurse my mom was mad. She worries like moms do.
I know that abby was still alive when i adopted peanut but i really do believe that she picked her out for me. I see so Much of Abby’s personality in peanut. She is so young and spunky i am actually looking into adopting another tripod that is young enough to play with her. There is a puppy at a rescue in dallas that was found by train tracks with her leg cut off. The rescue amputated the remaining front stump so i put in an application to adopt her. I am in NJ so i am not sure if they will adopt from texas to NJ but i contacted them and they said that they have done long distance adoptions before. She is still small so i might be able to fly to het her and carry her on the plane. It would be a three day drive one way to get her but ill do what i have to do. I think peanut would be so happy to have a best friend to play with. She tries with carter but he only plays for a minute and then goes somewhere to get away from her. I dont want to get my hopes up tho because a month or two ago i applied to adopt a blue pittie rear tripod and she went to another family. If its meant to be it will be. I know anby is looking down on me making sure i do what is best.
Thanks again for all your support. I would not have made it through everything with all of you 🐾❤️🐶
Would love to see a picture of Peanut, she sounds so sweet! We have similar going on here with Mitchell and Bo in the "personality" department, lol. Bo gets all excited every time Mitch comes downstairs to eat or go out, and Mitch tolerates Bo for a few seconds and then goes wherever he can to get away from him 
I thought getting a pup would be good for Mitch, ummm... nope, lol. But we all go on and do okay.
Peanut's incision area... you said she had 2 surgeries there, correct? One for the amp and one for the skin flap? It actually does make sense to me in respect to scar tissue and having a bit less circulation there. She may not notice it at all and may be warmer further down where the circulation is better but my non professional guess would be that is all it is. And just for the sake of warmth possibly being an issue in the cooler weather, she would probably look pawsome in a nice sweater for the fall/winter 
It is really good to hear from you, and bless you for continuing on with special needs furbabies. You have a wonderful background for it, and obviously Angel Abby is guiding you from the other side.
Sending lots of hugs and love your way,
Jackie and Huck 
Hugs,
Jackie, Bo, Andy, Oscar, Phoebe, and the coolest feral tripawd kitty Huckleberry 
I'm really glad you posted too, it's never easy grieving and when people don't return, I understand, but I also worry. So I'm glad to know that you made it through the hardest part. Be proud of that! It IS hard to picture our life without our heart dog! But you made it through horrible emotional pain for Abby and the pups, what a gift you gave them, and they will reward you in return a thousand time over.
Sorry about your grumpy old man's health issues. I want to bring up something because whenever a pet parent says their dog is old and grumpy and aging, it can often indicate untreated pain. These pain signals in dogs are something to consider when you watch his behavior and how he interacts with Peanut. Yes, it's normal for dogs to slow down a bit over time but being grumpy is one way they tell us that they hurt. Especially considering that he's dealing with mast cell cancer, maybe there's something bothering him there? If not, old age doesn't have to mean being in pain. Has your vet done a pain management assessment on him?
Also, his behavior at the vet clinic may be another pain indicator. I know a lot of dogs have a hard time at vet clinics, but if your vet isn't practicing Fear Free handling techniques (where a sedative or usually even muzzles are not required because the staff has studied modern handling protocols), this could be why your old man's pain hasn't been addressed. They just can't get close enough for him to relax so they can assess it. If you feel in your gut that this is the case, I would look for a new Fear Free Certified vet.
Yay for Peanut doing well though! For sure Abby picked her out! That's wonderful news things are good on her side. I see you posted in Ask a Vet, good job!
Tripawds Founders Jim and Rene
tripawds.com | tripawds.org | bemoredog.net | triday.pet
I dont think he is in pain. I have done my own pain assessment on him because when wea re at home i can do anything to him. My vet manipulated his joints while he was out for his dental and said everything looks good. He only had one mast cell tumor and he never even really messed with it except for the fact that is was right next to his boy part. He jumps around just fine. He jumps from my bed to the loveseat in my bedroom because he knows that peanut cant jump after him. She has to go to the end of the bed and go down the steps. By the time she does all that he just jumps back to the bed. He still chews on toys, goes up and downstairs fine, loves to bark at the squirrels outside and lay in the sun. He is must not the crazy zoomie dog he used to be. He really didnt settle down until he was five or six and i guess now he’s entering his retirement years.
He doesnt do well at the vet partially because he is not well socialized. He was my ex’s dog for a year before i moved in and he was basically kept out back all the time. It took a long time to even get him to not be a maniac in the house. He is great with me and such a different dog when its just us at home. I tried having my vet come to the house but that was even worse. He’s very protective of his home so he was even more crazy. He does ok in the car to the vet and i can muzzle him not problem so its easier to just let them sedate him versus stress him out. He is one of those dogs that the more you restrain the harder he fights and hes a 60 pound pit so he is strong as hell. Thats why i had his dental, three teeth extractions, bloodwork and mass removal all at one time. He had a few rough days but if i was going to put him under anesthesia i just wanted to do it all and be done.
Wow you've got your hands full for sure! Good job observing him. Keep it up!
Tripawds Founders Jim and Rene
tripawds.com | tripawds.org | bemoredog.net | triday.pet
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