@samoisus We have a rear leg amputee. There’s pros and cons to having front vs rear (as if you can choose). With front leg you have to be careful about jumping down off couches or stairs because dogs hold most their body weight on their front legs. But all their running power and up stairs comes from back legs.
After recovery it’s likely your dog won’t even realize she’s missing a leg. But recovery itself is gonna be hell especially on an active dog.
@samoisus He had it before actually - no idea what happened but he was found in a ditch with wire wrapped around his leg, it was rotting and he was septic and severely sick.
We’ve had surgeries on our other dogs and it was all just crate rest for 6-8 weeks and slow walks and physical therapy. Pat (the lady who rescued our boy) said recovery was the same. Check out the subreddit /r/tripawd or tripawds? I’m on my phone and it won’t link properly but there’s a lot of stuff there.
@samoisus I just read you’re in Ohio - us too. Not sure where I’m Ohio but we go to Medvet in Worthington a lot. We’ve had multiple dogs with ACL repairs there, luxating patella, cancer surgery, and also some internal med visits for a diabetic cat. There’s also the OSU veterinary hospital as well.
@kethi That is actually where we ended up. Drive down sucked. Lots of whining and whimpering but she’s finally there. Waiting to hear what our options are.
@samoisus Thank you for that - so far everything sounds good and I have hope for you guys! I’m in human medicine and a cracked scapula is not something we see hardly ever at all. Since they didn’t jump straight to surgery there’s a chance she’ll be able to remain whole I think? I bet she’s on a huge cocktail of meds right now but I’m glad she has some relief.
Did they do any stitches or anything to pull and hold it back together?
Regarding the fusion - we were looking at a fusion in our youngest dog the downside is fusions over joints are difficult for active dogs. It’s probably better to lack the entire leg than not be able to bend it. Take that up with your surgeon though if they havent already brought it up.
@kethi No attempt to stitch anything yet. Idk about other peoples cattle dogs but her shoulder muscles are massive and they seemingly took a lot of the damage.
If you look at my 2nd Imgur link you can see what she impaled herself on and you can imagine how deep the wound is.
Right now it’s one of the biggest items I lack understanding of; how the wound is going to heal some ahead of surgery if it’s just packed full of gauze?
@samoisus Yeah it’s probably not going to heal at all with the wound open like that and no attempt at closure. They may be hoping to reduce swelling before surgery - we do that with human fractures before casts etc, wait a few days for swelling to resolve. But I know nothing about animal medicine or even much about soft tissue - I’m mostly a bones girl.
Sometimes I think the surgeons underestimate how active people say their dogs are, just because humans ourselves lie and say we’re more active than we are so our dogs going on a 20 minute slow leisure walk seems like a lot of exercise to most humans but that’s NOTHING to dogs especially athletically active cattle dogs. My youngest surgeon really kinda blew us off in that regard and it pissed me off.
@kethi On the fusion aspect. I’m really trying to drill it into the surgeons head that she is FAST, and makes HARD cuts and stops that i won’t be able to stop her from doing every time. The recovery time, re-injury risk, and infection risk will be the three biggest factors we take into consideration for the path we take after Monday’s CT
@samoisus Not a heeler - but my shorthaired pointer went on to live another 6 or so years after he had an FHO - basically a doggy hip replacement.
Cost a pretty penny but well worth it and I got to keep the chunk of bone they cut off haha
ETA: we retired him from the field after the accident — he just started to tire too quickly while out navigating in the tall grass and hills trying to track - but he played HARD until his very last day.
@samoisus So that’s the procedure you’re looking at? I can’t recall if it’s still called an FHO on a shoulder — however, I will explain it the way my vet explained it to me — the FHO is the best procedure for “working” breeds simply because, literally, within the first 24 hours of the procedure — they want them up and using that leg how they normally would’ve prior to the accident.
@samoisus Friends of mine foster and a lot of rescue dogs from up north Canada end up losing a leg thanks to car accidents (which is usually how the dogs are caught for rescuing in the first place)
Never seems to be an issue once the dogs get used to being a tripod they live their best life.
@samoisus My cattle dog mix had the doggy version of a torn ACL repair after she slipped going down the stairs. The hardest part was keeping her quiet and rested the surgery. She was convinced crates were of the devil (she was a rescue and we don't know what her previous experience with them was) so we blocked off the back room for her. We put up a gate, she jumped it. We blocked the door with a plastic tub and stuff on top, she jumped it. We moved a couch to block the door with the back to her so she couldn't climb up onto the seat and escape, she jumped it. The only good thing was that she wasn't using her bad leg to jump. She would line herself up, pick up the bad leg, and spring over like she was a kangaroo.
