Timber update

 Last week Timber's incision started to ooze a bit...and I watched it.  By the next day it was dripping so we decided to take her into the vet to get it checked out.  I also wanted to see if they could help me figure out how to get her to take her pills as the commercial pill pockets weren't working and Timber was biting the antibiotic capsules in half and spilling out her much needed antibiotics.  By the time we got her out of the truck and into the vets office (poor thing was shaking so much as she realized where she was...seems pretty reasonable since the last time she was there they hacked off her limb) her leg was really streaming a good quantity of blood onto the floor.  The vet gave it a once over and decided that it wasn't infected despite her refusal to take her antibiotic and that the blood was just from a bruise under the incision (we hadn't been doing a good enough job keeping her still and she had landed on her stump quite a few times scrambling for the front door on the hardwoods).  So the vet just bound it up after holding a compress on it for a bit to stop the bleeding.  She also showed me how to open up Timber's jaws and put my hand basically down her throat to deposit the antibiotic at the very back where Timber's only option was to swallow it.  That night it worked, but by the next morning Timber was wise to me and refused to open her mouth.  So when we took her back to the vet that evening to get the bandage off and rechecked I asked if they could switch her to a tablet antibiotic as she seemed to take these better and it didn't matter if she crunched them in half in the process.  We also asked if it was a bad idea to stuff the pills (she was taking pain pills as well) into pieces of hotdog- they said fine and that worked for the next two days before the novelty of hotdogs wore off and Timber was refusing those too.  The pills must be fiercely bitter- so we have now resorted to wrapping them in deli roast beef and she has yet to refuse her meds.  Her incision check showed it to be healing nicely with barely an ooze.  Since then her leg is looking better and better.
This Friday she gets her staples removed which means she won't have to wear the cursed cone anymore either.  Her last antibiotic is tomorrow morning and I think she will actually be sad come the evening and she doesn't get her beef.
In the meantime she is thrilled with the freedom of life on the family farm in North Carolina.

Homecoming

Timber got to come home today.  Unfortunately she has to wear the annoying cone collar for 14 days since she started messing with her staples while at the vets and managed to get out quite a few (she has to be sedated again to put them back in).  She already managed to break the collar once since getting home because she doesn't yet realize how big it is and banged it into the front steps when we got home from the vets.  The doctor assures us that she will soon figure out how not to knock it into everything.  In the meantime James is being traumatized by her in that collar since their heads are at exactly the same height.  He has had a few crying jags already this morning when she came his direction.  Soon her hair will start growing back in, both on her haunch and her leg (where the IV was during surgery).  She is doing surprisingly well with the collar- I thought it would drive her crazy.  I'm sure it helps that she is doped up on pain meds that make her a bit more mellow and sleepy.

17 hours ago...(not for the squeamish)

 Just 17 hours ago the vet called and let me know they were done with Timber's surgery- it took over 4 hours.  The vet called again this morning and let me know  that she was up and about, had eaten well and had even gone outside to pee.

 She said I could come by for a visit when she called last night and I took advantage of being close by this morning with James, Christi and Elsa, Shelly and Christian at Leapin Lizards (James needed some fun) by leaving James under care of Shelly and Christi while I quickly went to say hello to Timber.

It looked a lot better than I was anticipating, as she still has part of her thigh bone the incision is under her rather than on the side.  You can see the staples in the last picture.

In the video you can see how quickly she has adapted already.  She even can make it up stairs on her own.We'll get to bring her home Saturday morning.

Still a bookworm

James still loves his books, so much so that he doesn't even care if he is reading them upside down.  These are two of his favorite pages- fish and sea star.

Not a James post

 This may not be directly about James, but as a happy momma makes for a happy James, I am happy to say I FINALLY finished Tim's sweater after two years of effort.

well, almost finished...I still need to sew on the elbow patches.

James the pirate

My baby bean is getting so big and lean (okay, so not so lean as is evident by those juicy wrists!)

Should it stay or should it go

Since the last post a lot has been going on in our lives, hence the lack of  posts.  Most recently we discovered that Timber has cancer in her left hind leg.  This we found out 2 weeks ago after I took her to the vet because of a suspicious lump.  I initially thought she had sprained something or gotten bitten by a spider or even stung by bees.  The first vet we saw on Weds said he didn't think it likely that it was any of those but thought we could go ahead and try giving her a course of antibiotics to see if they helped and if they didn't by the following Monday I was to bring her in for an x-ray.
However, by Friday she wasn't even bearing any weight on that limb and we couldn't stand the thought of her going through the whole weekend in pain if it was something that could be easily helped.  So I took her back and got her x-rays.
Thankfully it didn't show bone cancer of the sort that actually affects the bone, but rather the kind that is in the cartilage (this was confirmed by a needle biopsy).   This was good because it is a less aggressive form of cancer and less likely to quickly metastasize.  X-rays of her lungs didn't show any cancer, so it was looking like we'd at least have some options for treatment.
The vet sent us home with pain meds while we awaited the needle biopsy results and told us to think about how we would like to address the issue- choices being: A) just keep Timber on pain meds and let the cancer spread until it increased her pain level to the point we couldn't keep up her quality of life (the advantage of this route is that our already skittish Timber would get to keep running around to her heart's content on 4 legs) or, B) amputate the leg and contain the cancer (the advantage to this decision is a hopefully longer life as the prognosis for just pain meds is death with one to two month of diagnosis, where if they amputate and average is another 18 months).
Now of course Timber is a dog, not our child.   But when I look at her and know that according to the experts she is actually still smarter than the average two year-old and has feelings...it's hard to know what to do.  Do we put her through the pain of surgery and recovery and possibly the emotional anguish of finding that those darn hardwood floors she was already sliding around on with 4 good legs are even more treacherous with just 3?  Or do we let her keep the sick leg and watch the sickness slowly gobble up the rest of her body?
If she was acting old in any other way- problems with her hips, eyesight, anything!....it would have made it easier on us to make a decision.  But Timber still acts like a young dog when she spies a squirrel or when she is warning the UPS man not to trespass onto her turf.  And when she would come up to us and look at us with shining brown eyes to beg for a treat you could tell it is only her leg that is sick, not her.
So...after many discussions and tears (at least on my part) we finally decided to go the amputations route.  As I type this she is at the vets recovering- now formally a "Tri-paw" dog.  If she does well tomorrow and Friday with getting up and going outside to use the bathroom and is eating well we will be able to pick her up on Saturday morning.  Unfortunately, she might be wearing one of those dorky collars to keep her from messing with the staples.  So not only will she be navigating our hardwoods on three legs, she'll have a collar that'll make it hard for her to see where she is walking.  Poor bean.  But hopefully we have made the right decision for her and her recovery will be complete and before we know it she'll be back to running after critters (though at a slightly slower pace).
All the literature and stories from other owners say the dogs don't really care that they only have 3 legs.  We shall soon see!
And for those wondering, the financial aspect of the decision did factor in quite highly- ironically, keeping her on pain meds was just about as expensive as taking off the offending limb.  I suppose we could have quite giving her the meds and just put her down when she got bad enough, but as I said before she has feelings and we couldn't stomach the idea of watching her slide into depression and anguish from the pain- and we couldn't possibly put her down now when she is her natural happy self when on pain meds.  Never thought I'd have to make this kind of decision about a dog (and in a previous non-dog owner life I would have thought anyone crazy for going to this extent) but what can I say, we love her.

 James has burgeoning interest in Timber- he helps me feed her and has taken to try to hand feed her the kibble (she is so laid back with him that he can stir her food around with his hand in her bowl while she is eating).  He is also learning to pet gently.

 The lump.

 I was trying to get a "before" shot so I bribed her into lying down by asking her if she wanted a belly rub and this is her eager pose.

 And this is James getting frustrated that I am taking pictures of Timber and not letting him see the pictures on the back of the camera.

 So I told him I would take one of us and show it to him.

 Much happier!  Now we'll just have to see how he does with giving Timber some breathing room to recover once she is home.