Lilly

It was either on Nov 12 or 13th that Lilly came in the house limping after rushing out to chase after a squirrel.  I tried to figure out what she might have done to herself but couldn't come up with anything on my own or with the help I got from numerous internet searches.  So since she didn't show any improvement I made an appointment to have our vet look at her.

Unfortunately the vet was able to diagnose Lilly in a flash.  When he showed me I knew exactly what was up without him having to say a word.  Lilly had torn her ACL in her back left leg.  That meant surgery.  Okay well it doesn't necessarily mean surgery... well here are the options.

1) do nothing and the dog limps for the rest of her life and probably gets arthritis which makes the rest of her life painful.

2) surgery done at my vet's office.  This is the cheapest of the surgery options.

3) surgery done at a vet in Colorado Springs. 
4) surgery done at another vet - he didn't say where this vet was.

Options 3 & 4 were both more expensive and after looking online I realized that both options were really for larger dogs than Lilly.

See a torn ACL is usually suffered by larger breed dogs (like Labs, etc.) and usually happens when the dog is younger (around age 2).  When an older dogs suffers this injury it is usually because they're overweight.

Well Lilly is 10 and not overweight.  I'm not sure why hers went out.  at any rate, it is pretty likely that she'll tear out the other one.  bummer.

We decided to have the surgery done at my vet's office as it seemed that type of surgery was best for a dog of Lilly's size and age.

Lilly went in on Nov 23rd and came home on the 24th.

The 24th was pretty awful for us.  I don't know for sure but I think it might have been that Lilly accidentally got too much of her morphine medicine.  She showed signs of morphine psychosis and was driving us all nuts with her constant whining.  DH and Darly refused to allow me to give Lilly any more of her morphine as they were worried that she would keep them up all night whining.

DH & Darly got to sleep just fine...it was me who was up all night with Lilly and at about 2:45 I gave Lilly more morphine...I cut her pill though as I was worried about her medicine schedule.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to cut the pill in half so she got about 1/3rd of it.  But that took the edge off of her pain and allowed both of us some sleep.

Things were going well until I asked the vet about just wrapping Lilly's wound instead of making her wear the cone of shame at night.  The vet was pretty insistent that Lilly wear the cone as she didn't think that I could wrap the wound in a way that would keep Lilly out of it...I didn't tell the vet that I had already been just wrapping it and not forcing Lilly to wear the cone.

Lilly's leg is healing up really nicely and she is using it as much as the vet wants her to at this point.  Lilly still wants to lick at her wound but knows she isn't allowed.  So she'll either lay down on that leg so she can't get at it OR she'll sneak off to somewhere I am not at when I'm not looking.  bugger!

Tomorrow is one week since her surgery...we've got 11 more to go.