Tag: Doggos

Been a while since I updated the progress on our greyhound Hobbes and his leg injury (see here and here for earlier developments). After his procedure in January he spent a number of weeks getting driven to Pittsburgh weekly for follow-up visits, and then he was released to physical therapy here at home, and he’s been doing very well. You can still tell that he favors that leg on occasion, but he’s getting much stronger on it and he walks normally, maybe eighty percent of the time. That’s huge, since at the time nobody was totally confident that he’d be able to even keep the leg.

However, since they didn’t do the bone fusion operation like had been originally planned (for many reasons, most of which were along the “We think he can mostly heal on his own and then we can always do the fusion later if it doesn’t work, but so far he’s healing” line), the vet in Pittsburgh strongly advised an orthotic device for the injured leg, that he’ll use mainly in situations when we want to let him off-leash (like, going out on his own in the backyard to do his business, which he hasn’t done on his own since October). A couple weeks ago he went to Pittsburgh to get fitted for his brace (they make them to order), and yesterday, it came! Here’s how it looks:

Now comes the work of getting him used to that thing. He wore it briefly last night, and he did walk around on it a bit, though after a minute or two he was clearly annoyed by it. Another step on the road to recovery and normal life, though!

The brand is My Pet’s Brace, by the way. 

Share This Post

So, a while back I wrote about an injury Hobbes sustained back when he was running in our yard. Well, this has been a long time developing and the story still isn’t done.

As a refresher: Hobbes came up whimpering and lame while running in our yard. We thought he had clipped a tree or hit the fence, but even then I wasn’t sure how that would have resulted in a fracture in his ankle, given how glancing the blow would have been on that particular day. We have since concluded that he likely had a lingering injury from the race track that just happened to go on that particular day.

Treatment started with six weeks or so all wrapped up like that, with us having to help Hobbes hobble out to the street to do his business. When we went in for the checkup at the end of that, it turned out that he had healed somewhat, but not enough–and worse, the constant wrapping of his leg had left him with some nagging sores, which meant infection. At this point it was seeming likely that surgery was in his future…and surgery of this type can’t be done in Buffalo, because there simply aren’t any local specialist vets with experience in this sort of thing.

Another vet took over and did some treatments using sound waves to hopefully stimulate bone growth. We did this for another six weeks or so, and it did work…but not well enough. We determined that surgery to fuse the broken bone in the ankle was the way to go. So now we were contacting specialist vets, including at Cornell University in Ithaca, or a clinic in Mississaugua, outside Toronto. We ended up scheduling the surgery with a vet in Pittsburgh, and last week, down he went (with The Wife and The Daughter) for the procedure. (This was exciting in itself, as the weather in the 716 last week was not conducive to going much of anywhere.)

So, last Thursday they got him to this vet in Pittsburgh for the pre-surgery consultation–and here we actually got some good news: the ankle has actually continued healing, to the point that this vet thinks surgery wasn’t warranted at this time. The problem now is the sore on his leg; greyhounds have trouble healing when it comes to sores on their legs because they simply don’t have much skin down there to work with. While he isn’t getting the fusion surgery at this time (it is an option later on), the sore needs to be monitored for healing. The doc did a procedure to close it as best he could, and now, believe it or not, Hobbes has to go to Pittsburgh twice a week for four to six weeks. Ouch.

For all that, Hobbes is doing pretty damned well. His mood is good, he is becoming obsessed with car rides, and his appetite is impressive. We’ve had him about six months, which is roughly when new greyhounds start to really come out of their shell and show their personality. Hopefully once spring arrives we’ll finally have a fully healthy greyhound who does all the greyhoundy stuff.

Hopefully!

Share This Post

Poor doggo!

The other day Hobbes was sprinting around our yard, which he’s done dozens of times since he’s been with us, but this time he cut too close to the fence or maybe he clipped one of our trees or…we don’t know. All we do know is that he suddenly abandoned his run and came back to us, yelping in pain and keeping that leg off the ground. It turns out that he has a small fracture, so no running for him for a while, until we get that healed up! Also, it put the kibosh on our plans to take him on a fall road-trip to Letchworth State Park, which was a favorite thing of ours to do with Cane. Alas, now he’ll likely have to wait until spring to see and smell Letchworth.

This is the first major speedbump we’ve had with Hobbes; in just about every other way he’s been a delight to have around, and he loves Carla and is actually willing to play with her in a way that Cane was often reluctant to do. It’s been interesting to see which traits he shares with Cane and which ones are unique to him–one major one is that getting Cane to go outside and pee was a simple matter of opening the door and letting him out, whereas Hobbes doesn’t seem to have the “marking” thing down, so he’ll end up holding his pee until the bitter end, at which time it takes him up to a minute to actually get things done. Hobbes also eats fruits and veggies (Dude goes apeshit over watermelon!), where Cane’s response to being offered a piece of banana or apple was a look of befuddlement.

Anyway, take a moment to feel sorry for Hobbes. Poor Hobbes!

 

Share This Post

• 
  

  
  
  

• 
  

  
  
  

• 
  

  
  
  

• 
  

  
  
  

• 
  

  
  
  

• 
  

  
  
  

• 
  

  
  
  

•