Today was another in a long line of vets visits. You may remember that Jake the dog busted his leg way back in October. Well it turned out that he had popped his ligaments and snapped off the bottom of his femur.
Now anyone who has had a similar injury will tell you the bone healing is easy compared to the ligaments. The vets wanted to operate and put a metal framework in but I wasn’t keen. I don’t believe in surgery as a first resort. Don’t get me wrong I have no problem with surgery the way I know some people are against it….. I just believe that Mother Nature is amazing at repairing things and we often don’t give her the chance.
Of course it’s a lot easier when you’re making the decision for yourself. But in this case, it was for my dog. I basically had three choices :
- Surgery to rebuild the ligaments and put a metal frame on the leg, pins etc….
- Strap up his leg with a splint and see if it heals
- Amputate the bottom of his leg
Not a nice list of options. However I decided to go for option number 2. I had a similar injury many years ago and that was the option I chose for myself, so I felt it was ok to choose this for him.
That’s when the on going visits started. Since the end of October he has been going in to the vets roughly twice a week to have his ‘cast’ changed. This was basically a splint bound onto his leg with lots and lots of bandages. It also had to be kept dry as once wet you couldn’t dry it off. Of course getting Jake to understand this wasn’t easy. So no walkies, especially in the snow. Well, 8 weeks later it was time to see if his leg was able to support him without the splint (I might add that he had broken 3 splints bounding about on it while it was bandaged up).
My heart was in my mouth as we got him down off the table and tentatively allowed him to put his foot down on the floor. Then disaster! He immediately tried to jump up and down, squealed in pain and hopped over to ‘mummy’ and refused to leave my side again.
Hoping it was just the initial shock I brought him home and flopped on the sofa feeling sick to my stomach. However slowly he started using his leg again and now 4 days later he’s happily bounding about on it. Phew! Obviously he’s not out of the wood yet and walkies are a long way off (I know how he runs about)….. but it’s looking like he’ll be able to enjoy a lovely holiday next summer exploring somewhere new….. All of these shots were taken on our trip to Bonny Scotland in August this year. Jake thought it was brilliant……
Yay Jakey! :D
ReplyDelete