I Am A Cranky Old Man
I took the doggies out o the North Platte river near Deckers, CO, for the first official swim of 2010. Lucy didn’t do any swimming last year due to her leg injury so I was curious to see how quickly she would take to the water.
After wading in a few times she finally got caught in the current and swam enough to get back to shore. After that she repeatedly waded out to the deeper water and drifted downstream with the current, and even went out in the river alone a few times.
She’s grown a little in the past year…
I took Lucy to see the vet today. I wanted the vet to look at the sore on her toe-pad and to make sure the nail she broke off on Saturday was not infected.
The vet said that the toe was slightly infected and re-wrapped it after cleaning it a bit — it looks like one of those casts that football players wear on a broken hand. She prescribed some antibiotics as well and we’re headed back next Wednesday to see how it’s healing.
My vet is still not convinced that we won’t have to amputate the leg. If we can’t keep get the toe to heal it will be a never-ending battle with the ulcers and eventually the toe will become very infected. I asked if perhaps instead of taking the whole leg we could just amputate the outside toe, since it is not really a weight-bearing part of the foot. The vet was not sure that would help, since the ulcers appeared to be caused in part by Lucy’s unorthodox walking manner.
The vet was impressed by how much Lucy uses the leg and how well she walks and carries her weight on it, but she is really trying to manage my expectations by keeping the idea of amputation in my mind.
I took the girls up to Guanella Pass again today after last weekend’s aborted attempt. I had read enough articles and the CDOT road condition web site to know that the access from the north at Georgetown was still closed due to an impending rock slide, so we took the southern route up 285 through Connifer and Bailey. It’s a nice drive, but there were quite a few others who had the same idea today.
I like to head all the way to the summit of Guanella Pass where you’re above the tree line and only a few miles of moderate climbing from Mt. Bierstadt. We arrived later than we should have, but the weather was still fine, if a bit blustery.
The dogs were annoyed that they had to stay on-leash in the car park and the first 500 meters of the trail, but when I let them loose they ran as fast as they could through the scrub brush and over rocks for about twenty minutes straight. I only knew where they were by watching the brush shake as they ran through it, like tiny sasquatches running through a miniature forest.
Once they had that out of their system, we headed up the trail to Mt. Bierstadt. I wasn’t sure how far Lucy would be able to make it so I kept a close eye on her. The girls eventually found Duck Lake and the lake’s nasty bog-mud soon covered them. Think hundreds of years of leaves and other organic material mixed with mud… sticky and difficult to get off of dog fur. Lucy discovered how the lake acquired its name and chased several duck families from their bedding spots. I eventually called her back to the trail since we were technically in a wilderness area and harassing the wildlife is frowned upon.
I was surprised by how green and wet it was, even way up where it is traditionally windy and dusty. The stream we had to cross was roaring in comparison to the last time I saw it. In fact, I nearly fell in the pool of water at the trail crossing as the stream was splashing up on the boulders and making them extremely slippery.
Once we crossed the stream, we headed another mile or so up the trail and began encountering a ton of people headed back down to the car park. I was confused a little but since we arrived a little later than normal I assumed they had summited and were headed back… but I soon discovered why everyone was coming down from the peak: a thunderstorm was developing overhead (literally overhead when you’re at 12,000+ feet / 3600+ m). When you see lightening or hear thunder at that altitude, you immediately head for lower ground and shelter.
The GPS receiver said we did about 4.5 miles total on the round trip, which is pretty good considering Lucy cannot feel her foot and still doesn’t have the stamina to run and climb at this altitude for long periods of time. Fabi, of course, was not the least bit tired and whined all the way back down the hill to the highway from the back seat, but Lucy laid her head down and took a snoring nap. She ran and climbed and attempted to keep up with Fabi but all of that effort had finally caught up with her.
Once we made it back home, I gave Lucy a bath to remove some of that stinky mud. Fabi is deathly afraid of the bathtub so we went out in the front yard and I sprayed her down with the garden hose, which she loves. She is one crazy dog sometimes.
Update: It appears that Lucy broke off part of one of her claws today. The quick had ruptured and was bleeding after her bath tonight. It saddens me when I think that she cannot feel much (anything?) in her foot and a seemingly innocent hike today could have really caused a lot of damage.
Lucy now does a 1.6-mile circuit twice daily.
The critical part of Lucy’s recovery, according to my vet (and a neurologist she consulted) was whether Lucy could support her weight on the injured leg. If she could do that, there was a chance that she wouldn’t have to lose the leg… if not, then amputation was likely.
I am happy to report that Lucy not only puts weight on the leg, she walks and runs on it. She still stumbles and hops occasionally, and she still has some paralysis in the foot, but at this point my vet will re-evaluate at the six-month point on what our next steps will be. My personal opinion, unless the vet gives me a DAMN good reason, is that Lucy will keep the leg. Unless you had seen her right after the accident, you would have no idea she couldn’t use the leg at all for over a week.
I took this video about two weeks ago, and since then Lucy has improved even more. She still can’t go a long distance, but we can make it over to our local park and back, plus a good long run/wrestle with other dogs we meet there. It’s probably about 2/3 mile round trip.
Things have been pretty busy here lately — I’m lucky if I have time to check e-mail each day. We also had a bit of an accident last week that has kept the mood around the house a little sad…
Last Saturday (the 11th) I took the dogs out to Chatfield State Park to play in the large dog park. Once we were inside the park on the access road, apparently Lucy climbed up on the arm rest on the door with her back legs and squeezed her body through the window opening, which was only really open far enough for her head to stick out — or so I thought. She lost her balance and fell out of the window on to the roadway. Luckly, I was only driving about 25 MPH or this would be a very sad story.
Lucy had some road rash on her head, nose and front right leg, but no apparent fractures. It’s difficult to tell with puppies since their growth plates in their bones don’t fuse together until 10 months of age or so, but a comparison to her other front leg didn’t show any fractures. When I first stopped the car and ran up to her, although I knew an injured animal might bite me I still reached out to touch her head and comfort her. She bit the crap out of my hand and then realized who I was. She was in shock when I carried her back to the car and drove her to the emergency pet hospital.
Once the vets looked her over they told me there were no fractures but she appeared to have damaged the nerve bundle in the “arm pit” of her right leg. This nerve bundle controls motor function in the leg, and the reason she wasn’t putting any weight on the front right paw was because she could not feel it. With nerve damage, there’s not a good way to tell how extensive it is and they couldn’t tell me if the feeling would come back at all. In fact, they advised me that in many cases the nerves are so badly damaged that they recommend amputation of the leg, since it is just limp and is dragged around. If the limp leg was injured she wouldn’t even know it, and at the very least it would atrophy from lack of use.
Clearly, I needed a second opinion on this, so I took Lucy to her vet on the following Monday. The vet seemed to concur with the emergency vets’ diagnosis, but she wanted to wait quite a while before we make a decision about amputation.
In the meantime, Lucy doesn’t really act hurt at all. She does hop around on three legs, but I have seen real improvement in her leg and she even started reacting to pinches on the “dead” paw. We went back to the vet today and she was happy with Lucy’s progress, too, but said she had consulted with a neurologist who said that in most cases if the dog cannot support her weight on the injured leg it would never be useful to her. That’s our next milestone, then: to work with Lucy until she can stand with her weight on the front right leg and her rear legs. The vet wants to wait at least a month before we make any other decisions.
