Just last Monday we discovered that our 12 year old yellow lab had a bone tumor. I was blindsided when I got the news. He had been limping on and off (but mostly off) for about a month. I didn’t think too much of it until that morning when he started crying out and wouldn’t bear weight on it at all. We headed to the vet and they decided to do some x-rays. I never thought that it was going to be the diagnosis that we had. We are still waiting for biopsy results but as of now we are assuming that he has osteosarcoma. At first we thought that we were just going to do pain management with medicine, it seemed like it was going to be too hard on him to put him through surgery. But then I spoke to more and more vets and all but one strongly suggested the amputation to spare him the pain and possible future fracture. They were right, he was feeling so much pain already and it was only going to get worse as time went on. Bailey is such an active dog that I was afraid he was going to be too hard on himself and break it.
After tremendous contemplation, we decided to go with our normal vet and then have him watched overnight at a 24 hour clinic. I was very nervous about the decision not to go with a board surgeon but the price tag wasn’t something we could easily afford. The night before the surgery we showed our oldest son videos of tripawd dogs and asked him if he noticed anything about the videos. He kept on pointing out the color of the dog, his spots, that he was in the snow and looked happy but kept on missing the obvious. We finally asked him to count the dogs legs and that is when he finally noticed. We explained that our Bailey was going to be like that the next day and that he needed to be careful with him. He seemed to understand, I am happy we were able to share the videos with him and prepare him. Before I went to bed I got lots of hugs from my Bailey boy, literally with his paws on my shoulder. I wanted to get as much in because I didn’t think he would be able to do that anymore once one of his front legs was gone. I stayed up late getting great tips from some of the other tripawd members and then called it a night. I dropped him off in the morning and was able to hold it together until after he left the room. On the way out the receptionist informed me that her lab went through the same thing. She said she put up baby gates to keep her tripawd away from her other two labs. But before she was even able to shut her front door, her baby had jumped right over the baby gate. She said the dog did very well and lived 8 months before the cancer got her. I am hoping that we have 8 or more months and beat the odds some.
Bailey’s surgery went very well and his first night was smooth. The next morning he walked himself into the vets office, ate some food and went on a walk. I was so excited to go and see him. When they brought him out, I was so surprised to see how well he was doing. He had not really slowed down too much at all. He has a very big incision but it looks clean. The vet made him a little bandage sleeve to wear. I brought over a reusable shopping bag, cut open. The vet was actually quite impressed with that and I had to give the Tripawd community the credit. We brought him out and immediately he wanted to christen the plants. He seems to have a hard time with this since he lifts his rear left leg, putting most of the weight on the right front leg which is now missing. The vet said he will have to figure it out eventually by either squatting, switching to the other leg or finding a new balance. He enjoyed some scrambled eggs for dinner and had another dose of pain medicine and seems to be doing very well. Oh and that paw on the shoulders hug…he did it right in the exam room. I also thought we wouldn’t have to worry about him getting food off of the counter anymore but it seems I am wrong on that one as well. This evening he put his remaining front paw right up on the counter and looked for food. Truly amazing!
Let me try this video thing again….
Welcome, and thank you for sharing your story.
By blocking search engines as you did in your Settings, however, the Tripawds community was not getting notified of your new posts. We fixed that for you, but if you want to turn indexing off again for some reason, consider starting a forum topic and reply there with a link there every time you update this blog.
Hey guys it’s great to hear that things are going so well. How is Bailey today?
I wanted to let you know that your movie isn’t showing up. The best way to share movies here is to start YouTube account, upload the video there, and then come back here and past the video URL that you see in your browser bar. Not only will we be able to see it in your blog post but the whole world can be inspired by Bailey if you make it public in YT. Let me know if you need further help, that’s why we’re here.
3-paws up to you Bailey! I know you’ll figure out the potty thing real soon. Our Wyatt Ray just stretches his body real long and goes, he never feels a need to lift his leg anymore.