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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Hmm, the lethargy and anxious type of behavior could be pain, or nausea, or both. Did you give him the Cerenia yet? Maybe the food he ate last night had upset his tummy by the time it was late in the night.
Grass is so much gentler for dogs to walk on, after surgery. Even afterward. A therapist advised us to vary the surfaces when you take a dog walking. The gentle slopes and dips provide good proprioception (awareness of one's body in space), and are more challenging and thus beneficial, than just walking on the sidewalk. He'll find his way on the flat surfaces soon. So Geordie is already getting a little bit of rehab with those rocks and grassy areas!
I had no clue about the Newcastle nickname! It's so perfect for him! Thanks for the enlightenment, I'll stick that in my brain, maybe some day it'll come in handy when we're doing trivia night at a pub!
Love the backstory on hos name.
Yeah, some Vets are giving chemo sooner. Not sure if "statistical" benefit nfo is on that, maybe Jerry can add insight. It doesn surprise me that thisvery early on, while still trying to recover from MAJOR surgery, adjust to three, that the chemo may add another layer of slowing the recovery pace
And yeah, as Jerry said, pain could be involved too.
Happy Hannah had a glorious additional bonus time of over one yr & two months after amp for osteo! She made me laugh everyday! Joined April's Angels after send off meal of steak, ice cream, M&Ms & deer poop!
Our oncologist told us that recent evidence suggests that having chemo within 5 days of amputation has been linked to longer life expectancy. She warned us that obviously that depends on how the dog is recovering from surgery, but fortunately Geordie was doing well enough to get. his first dose of chemotherapy.
Geordie definitely seems more lethargic and less interested in food since his chemo. We gave him Cerenia yesterday to help with everything. He did wake up in the middle of the night again and just sit up. Then he came for some cuddles with me. Definitely seems like he's not feeling his best. This morning he wasn't interested in his food, even with ground beef added to it. So we added some scrambled egg. He ate the egg and left pretty much everything else.
In terms of getting outside, he is still slow to warm up on concrete and rocks, but really wants to get moving once on the grass. He has had normal bowel movements still about once a day since Sunday, so that's another positive.
Yeah it's interesting, over the last few years, more oncologists started leaning toward doing chemotherapy sooner. I see the official study dated 10/21 confirms their suspicions that it is helpful. Here's the study for anyone interested. I think we'll dig into this for a future tripawd talk episode.
Timing of adjuvant chemotherapy after limb amputation and effect on outcome in dogs with appendicular osteosarcoma without distant metastases
Conclusions and clinical relevance: Findings indicated that early (within 5 days) initiation of adjuvant chemotherapy after limb amputation was associated with a significant and clinically relevant survival benefit for dogs with appendicular osteosarcoma without distant metastases. These results suggested that the timing of chemotherapy may be an important prognostic variable.
Sorry he's not feeling so great. It's a really, really good sign that he has no GI upset and he's mobile. Hopefully his ick feeling will pass by the end of the week. I'd let your oncologist know if he's still the same by tomorrow morning.
Geordie is getting back to his old self now that the effects of chemo have worn off. He is hopping around great, though it does exhaust him quickly since his new walking motion is closer to his old running motion. We had our check up with the surgeon earlier this week which went well. Geordie was given the all clear to go back to acting like a dog. So we've been slowly increasing his activity and the distances of his walks. Today we went to the park and he was able to meet his first other tripawd!
"Getting back to being a dog", that is such great news! So thrilled to hear how well Geordie is doing. I know getting out to the park did you both a lot of good.
Thanks for the great update, we always love hearing good news like this!
Hugs
Sally and Alumni Happy Hannah and Merry Myrtle and Frankie too!
Happy Hannah had a glorious additional bonus time of over one yr & two months after amp for osteo! She made me laugh everyday! Joined April's Angels after send off meal of steak, ice cream, M&Ms & deer poop!
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