Caring for a Three Legged Dog or Cat
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Hi - just looking for some advice from our collective experiences.
Tahoe our great Pyrenees has lost a rear leg after a tragic auto accident. He had surgery on the 18th October and left the vets surgery on the 22nd. He stayed a little longer in hospital because we could not get him used to peeing with just one leg and had to use a catheter. He eventually figured it out and we brought him home.
One week ago - or 10 days or so after surgery, he has started to suffer badly from what I am certain is phantom Limb pain. They come Every hour or so and last all through the day and night. Yelping and pitiful barking - and of course accompanied by an acute human guilt complex from his parents!
After speaking to my vet and researching on here we have been using gabaprentin 400mg every 8 hrs (Tahoe is 110lbs and 9 yrs old). This initially helped in that maybe for 4 hrs after the dosage he had some relief and would sleep but the effect lessened after two days or so to almost no effect. And it has always had much less of an effect at night than during the day.
After reading here I have added tramadol to his 8 hrly dosage but still maybe now the dosage has an effect for 3 hrs if we are lucky and at night the yelping, whining and barking is more or less constant. He calms down if we lay with him and massage his leg or just pamper and stroke him but it is a continuous duty and exhausting when we are not able to sleep at all.
We are walking him to potty for maybe 300yds twice a day and we have blocked off stairs etc. - having read up here and spoken to my vet i do I do not think it is anything but phantom pain .
Here is my question - how long is this phantom pain likely to last. We simply cannot carry on with broken sleep like this. Even with this current dosage every hour or so at night he wakes the whole house and probably the neighbors with this yelping. It affects how well we can care for him also as we are just so tired with lack of sleep.
Please help - I know that every case is unique but i would like to hear your experiences with just how long this may last!
It really varies depending on the dog and the nerves involved. Your dog is large enough to handle 600 mg gabapentin 3 times daily but ask your vet first. Your vet can also add amantadine. Is your dog on an NSAID such as meloxicam? Some dogs need to take these anti-inflammatory medications for several weeks after a major operation.
Pam
Thanks for that - we have not had him on any NSAIDS - he was taking a very low dose steroid prior to the incident for Arthritis but we stopped that on advice of Vet after surgery.
He seems to be in a lot of pain today - yelping continuously though he has no sensitivity to touch, there is no redness or swelling and the scar tissue looks great
I have called the Vet but he is out until Wednesday - I have some low dose buffered Aspirin at hand (81mg). Does anyone know a safe Aspirin dosage for a otherwise healthy 110lb Pyrenees?
Hi Tahoe,
I'm so sorry the phantom pain issue is getting bad for you. Many folks here know how tough that is, but rest assured it does eventually go away.
Hopefully your vet can see you today. I wouldn't give a dog anything like asprin until I talk to the vet. Let us know what the doc says and prescribes for the pain OK?
Tripawds Founders Jim and Rene
tripawds.com | tripawds.org | bemoredog.net | triday.pet
jerry said
Hi Tahoe,I'm so sorry the phantom pain issue is getting bad for you. Many folks here know how tough that is, but rest assured it does eventually go away.
Hopefully your vet can see you today. I wouldn't give a dog anything like asprin until I talk to the vet. Let us know what the doc says and prescribes for the pain OK?
Hi Jerry - Thank you for the response. The vet recommended yesterday that we can give the 400mg of Gabapentin every 8 hours instead of 12 and add a tramadol which we did, but no more effective. I am waiting for a call from the vet today and hopefully he can either tell me to increase the dosage or come in. I really don't believe anything else is going on as he is eating, drinking, peeing and pooping normally. The whining and crying can be so pitiful at times and just breaks my heart. He is sleeping soundly now; which I'm sure he desperately needs. Other than that, he is getting around well and is acting more "himself" everyday.
Our dog is about 80 pounds & was taking 600 mg of gabapentin every 12 hours & that really seemed to help. He was also taking rimadyl every 12 hours for a short time & then when we felt he was uncomfortable, our vet gave us tramadol as well. In people, when the pain gets too bad it takes a lot of medication to bring the pain down to a manageable level (a lot more than if they had their pain adequately controlled to begin with). I found this also seemed to be true with Tucker. When we went in for our 1st post op visit I asked for more pain meds (tramadol) & it only took a few doses to get his pain under control. Once the pain was under control, we were able to back off a bit & he was fine.
I hope that you get the answers that you need so you can all rest comfortably tonight!
Here's to hoping that the adjusted medication works for Tahoe. Did the vet say anything about the aspirin? I know I've read here before about the safety of it when it comes to dogs, but I can't recall the answer. Refresh my poor memory if you can!
I know this healing phase is tough, but it's not forever, he'll start feeling better soon and you'll get some sleep too!
Tripawds Founders Jim and Rene
tripawds.com | tripawds.org | bemoredog.net | triday.pet
jerry said
Here's to hoping that the adjusted medication works for Tahoe. Did the vet say anything about the aspirin? I know I've read here before about the safety of it when it comes to dogs, but I can't recall the answer. Refresh my poor memory if you can!
I know this healing phase is tough, but it's not forever, he'll start feeling better soon and you'll get some sleep too!
Hi Jerry- I talked again with the vet today and Tahoe can have a maximum of 900mg of gabapentin per dose and 4 tablets of tramadol if needed. We are to try 600mg and 2 tramadol tablets and if that gets him through the night then we won't need to increase it. He didn't say anything about using aspirin. He also mentioned a drug that is used on humans for behavioral modification that we could try if this didn't subside in 3-4 weeks. Fingers crossed this lasts only 3-4 more days. He is really getting around great and otherwise doing very well. He's back to being a stubborn Pyr when he wants to go one direction and I want him to go another. I call it the Pyrenees Standoff. I win pretty easily these days. 
I call it the Pyrenees Standoff.
Heh heh! Did you ever think you would be glad to see that again?!
Happy to hear that you've got the dosage recommendation, I hope it works. And let's keep our paws crossed that you don't need the additional behavioral modification drug. I wonder which one it was? I'm thinking maybe clomicalm? Which is interesting, it's the first time I've heard a vet recommend it for phantom pain but I can see why they would.
Tripawds Founders Jim and Rene
tripawds.com | tripawds.org | bemoredog.net | triday.pet
FYI on the aspirin; there is a safe dose for dogs but it is not very effective and can cause GI bleeding as well as increased clotting times. Aspirin also reacts with other NSAIDS so if your dog has been on aspirin then you have to wait 3-5 days before trying something stronger like Rimadyl or Metacam.
Also do not give Tylenol or other human drugs such as Advil as these can cause liver damage or severe gastric ulceration.
Pam
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