who’d a thought?

Another lag between posts. Much has happened and many miles in between. I took a new job in the Twin Cities (at the Univ. of MN), which meant a move over the summer. It was a very …long…summer… getting through everything needed to move. But we’re here and enjoying life where the women are strong and the men are good looking and the pugs are plentiful.

Audrey loves St. Paul but she misses her dog friends in Maryland. We’re living in an apartment for at least half a year, but with two floors she has as much room to roam and run as in the old house. The big surprise is Audrey’s bathroom habits. I was a bit nervous about moving into an apartment with her. An environment that requires her going out on a leash to pee and poop. Back in MD she had the backyard. We wouldn’t watch too closely and just hoped that she did her thing while romping in the back. When we’d go on walks she would never pee or poop. Sniff alot. Explore trunks and grass. But nothing more. So I wondered how she’d do having to go on the leash.

You know what? Beautifully! After the first week of taking her out and still finding the occasional mess, I decided to try the reward system. I’d take bits of treats along with the bags and the leash and the apartment key, and when she’d go I’d give her a treat. “Good potty, Audrey!” Look at her in the eye. A chuck under the chin and a major head rub.  It didn’t take long at all. We do take her out regularly (3 or 4 times a day, including first thing in the morning). And that, along with the rewards, have done the trick. Yet another reason that Audrey is practically perfect.

Our next thing is to try out the dog parks. The Twin Cities are said to be very dog friendly. There are several leash free parks, not terribly far from the apartment. Audrey is longing to run with any dog she can. She encounters the other apartment canines and so wants to play.

We also discovered a wonderful farmers market in downtown St. Paul. After a single visit I am considering setting up a ‘pet the pug’ booth. I’d be rich. EVERYONE wanted to smile, pet or talk about Audrey. My husband learned that you don’t need a baby to draw attention from the 20 something cuties. Just have a pug at the end of your leash.

So Miss Audrey is adjusting quite nicely to Minneapolis and St. Paul. But, are they fully ready for all that is this pug???

Long time, new dog

Yes, it’s been quite a while since the last post. Sorry. So much has been going on in life. But what you really want to know is… how is Audrey doing?

Well, she’s doing GREAT! To back up, since late February she…

• had regular visits to Dr. Bowersett and to VOSM for cleaning the pin tracks and xrays, respectively. The cleaning was a weekly event. Xrays were about every 2-4 weeks. See the very great pix of Audrey’s leg during a routine cleaning appointment:Audrey in fixator, 3/07

A patient patient: patience

• then, in early April, as a very special birthday gift, Audrey the dog, started spotting bits of blood. At first I thought there was something wrong with one of the pin tracks, though we didn’t see any of them looking particularly nasty. Then we discovered she was … in HEAT! My little girl? We all figured she’d be out of the fixator in time to get her fixed, but not so. Dr. Bowersett wanted to wait another two months to let her uterus contract before doing the spay operation. Plus no sense in putting her through ‘all that’ while she was still in the fixator device. Fortunately our neighborhood isn’t populated with many gentlemen dogs out for a good time, so we didn’t need to protect Audrey too much from the pangs of young love.
• April 18: the day of freedom. Off comes the fixator and Audrey is sent home in a soft bandage. We leave that on for a few days, then it comes off. Clearly the holes where the pins entered her skin are visible, and her leg area is shaved – but otherwise she looks pretty good to go. Nevertheless I feel a bit anxious and watch her movements very closely. No false sense of security here.
• time passes – the leg looks good, and she is walking on it well (and shh! running sometimes too).
• late May – another visit to Jacksonville, where she is the favorite puppy at the Fleet Landing health center. Another long car trip; another wonderful traveling companion. This time, her bathroom habits are better and I don’t need to paper and plastic the whole floor worrying where she might go. But the weather is much hotter and I can’t leave her in the car to do any shopping. We are teathered for most of the trip – a happy pair.
• early June and it’s SPAY DAY. Only in addition to fixing the little girl, Dr. Bowersett repairs the hernia she had from birth. It’s not a surprise and I’m glad he caught it. Frankly I was more focused on their clipping Audrey’s nails when she was under anaesthetic. She’s VERY sensitive on her paws and with her leg and all I feared hurting her if we tried very hard to clip the nails. Audrey leaves the spay ‘n hernia experience like she had a spa treatment. In other words, or in Cathy’s words (the tech), Audrey behaved like she didn’t realize she had surgery. A quick check of her belly tells otherwise: the 6″ line of suchers makes her look like Frankenpuppy.
• June 18: the suchers are removed. Audrey’s happy and closes her eyes and smiles with each gentle snip, snip, snip.
• June 19: a final visit to Dr. Canapp. Audrey gets an A++ on her recovery. Dr. C is very happy indeed with her progress.
  • her two legs are the same length
  • the range of motion in the left leg is where it should be
  • there is no sign of osteoarthritis
  • though there is a small area of missing bone in the center of her wrist, it is surrounded by very solid bone material.

  Audrey is recommended to take a daily dose of glucosamine – a supplement that will keep her joints healthy. Otherwise she is literally good to go.

• That’s it for now. Stay tuned for more adventures of Audrey, the practically perfect pug – as Audrey moves to the Twin Cities (does anyone else hear the theme from the old Mary Tyler Moore show?). For now though, a HUGE round of applause and thanks to the very good folks at Four Corners Animal Hospital (esp. Dr. B, Cathy, Diana and Shannon) and to VOSM and Dr. C the miracle worker (remember when you write that journal article that the pug’s name is spelled A-U-D-R-E-Y) and the wonderful, Lisa. My little dog has a new leg thanks to you all!

Red Carpet wannabe

It was Oscar night at our house, which means a big party. Folks come over to watch the award show, we dress up, bring nominated movie-related food, guess the winners and have a great time. This year was a bit quieter – three regulars out with a) the flu, b) travel and c) second shift work. Plus we had a major (for DC) snow fall that day, which blanketed the area and made us all a little worried the weight of the wet snow might take out our power. Another downer was that the show felt very lllllooonnnnngggg.

But Audrey was a big hit! She dressed up in a beautiful red satin Chinese smock, complete with yellow frogs. Audrey was representing the nominee from China in the Best Costume category. She looked lovely – but sadly her award nominee did not win.

This is Audrey on Oscar Night. By this point she’d shed her costume and paraded around only in pearls. in-pearls.JPG

Last week she went to VOSM for a check-up, bandage change and xrays. Tomorrow she’s back to Dr. Bowersett for a bandage change and check-up. She’s becoming quite the regular visitor – and it’s wonderful to hear the clinic staff cheer when she arrives.

Now the routine

It’s been a couple weeks and not much to report. The little girl is doing great. She eats well, tries to maintain her regular existence (eat, sleep, chase the cats, sleep, poop/pee, chew on a chewie, sleep, repeat…) so we need to watch that she doesn’t run too fast or jump on or off something. Audrey is hell on three legs with good use on the occasion of her fourth. Today she’s back for a regular check up at VOSM. They’ll take some xrays, change her dressing and miss her when she’s back home.

In the time between posts, we had very cold, icy weather around here. I appreciated being able to take Audrey to our local vet for inspection and a bandage change. (Note: changing the bandage means replacing the gauze and color tape around the metal on teh fixator device). She likes to lick and chew it (poor thing, she needs some activity) and with a week’s wear looks pretty nasty. She started out in shocking pink, then went with a bright red (with heart), and sports a royal blue. Let’s see what she’s in when I pick her up.

Audrey’s barely on any meds – I give her the Prevacox and Tramidol as needed. The only indication of need (remember, she always look cute and sad) is her holding her bad leg up, usually at the end of the day.

The ice outside made it a challenge for those of us with two (or four) good legs to walk, so Audrey did her best. We’d carry her to a small patch of exposed dried leaves to do her business, which she mostly would do. But sometimes we both we eager not to stay outside too long and once inside, Audrey found the perfect spot to pee, or poop. But bless her little heart, she always sought a safe place – the papered floor area, on a rug, even in her crate because smart girl that she is she didn’t want to just squat anywhere.

I’ll have more pictures up soon. We’re very excited because I just bought her a beautiful, red satin, Asian smock with yellow frog closures and fleece and quilt lining. She looks mahvelous in it, though we can only get one leg through now. She’ll wear it to the Oscar party this weekend.

til after the party…

Perky puppy once again

Mystery illness solved and miss pug is back on her three and a half feet again!

She went for her weekly check-up at VOSM on Wednesday and I was a little worried that since she had done a 180 on using her leg that I might get a report that she wasn’t making good progress on her healing. Wrong. She’s doing great. But she does need to now push herself to use the leg to strengthen healing of the leg bones. The recommendation is that she up the pain meds so she feels more comfortable and wants to put pressure on her leg. We’ll use the Tramidol (1/4 tab as needed ) in the evening and (gulp) the Prevacox (1/2 tab once a day– notice how accurate I am on dosage and frequency of the medications?).

We’re done turning the bolts and stretching the bones. It wasn’t bad, I’m just glad it’s one less thing to tend to. Audrey’s new past time now that she’s feeling better is to lick and chew on her bandages. She’s not supposed to lick her wounds – where the pins go into her skin – and I sure didn’t want to keep in the Elizabethan collar. She hates it. I wrapped it in celophane and secured the wrap with a newspaper bag. I asked Lisa at VOSM what to do about it, and because we don’t need to access the bolts, she wrapped around both rings. It now looks like Audrey is wearing a very wide (4″) bracelet or stepped into a roll of pink tape. Only, Lisa decked her out in red tape with a big pink heart on it.

Not with the new wrap, but here’s Audrey and Alice watching TV:

So, what was the little girl’s problem last week? Dr. Canapp believes that it was a natural reaction to her healing from surgery, her body slowing her down from overdoing it the week before, and a reaction to a sudden stop in the Pevacox. She’s continuing on the antibiotic and now the pain pills. I’m glad we figured it out and I”m especially glad to have my practically perfect puppy back.

I also learned that our visits to VOSM will be weekly until the fixator comes off – probably til the end of March. Of course it makes sense but I didn’t know. Or how often xrays would be needed. At $105 per set, it will add a lot of the overall cost. She’ll need xrays about every two weeks from now on.  So we’re pretty close to $4,000 (so far). Best lets not think about the cost.

Just about the pleasure:

Back on 3 feet

After nearly a week under the weather, Audrey, the practically perfect pug is up and around. When I last wrote it was Thursday and she was down and out. Friday was more of the same – lethargic, not eating, but I noticed she was pretty warm. I didn’t do the thermometer up the butt thing, but could tell from holding her little body. Another call to VOSM to see if they knew why – but clearly Friday was a busy day for them. By 4:30 in the afternoon the front office gal called to say that Lisa was still with patients and couldn’t talk. In her unofficial advice giving role, she wondered aloud why I hadn’t taken Audrey to my own vet, given that fevers were nothing to fool around with. OK, I’m already worried, I don’t need to feel guilty. I was happy to take her to Dr. Bowersett but wanted some guidance from the folks I’d paid a boatload of cash to. But I digress.

We kept the little girl in cooked chicken and rice and broth and saw Dr. B on Saturday morning. Her temp was 103 (high – but how high?). He was with me that two of her pin tracks looked a bit yucky and maybe were infected. Something was going on. He didn’t think it was due to my boner on the meds but just to be sure he ordered up a complete blood test. (Read: expensive. ) I just hoped it wasn’t something else and different.

Good guy that he is, he got the results and called me on Sunday. Elevation in her white blood cells but the liver was clean. Start her on the antibiotic with food (I noticed that the directions on the pill bottle were highlighted. No letting this woman make more medication mistakes with this puppy!)

Monday and Tuesday she’s returned to her old self. She still isn’t using the leg like she did last week. She holds it up and barely puts weight on it. She’s not jumping on anything and we don’t worry about putting up baby gates when we go up the stairs. But the spark is back in those bulgy eyes and shes a happy girl.

Tomorrow we’re back for another check at VOSM. I’ll talk with them about her new favorite past time – licking her ring fixator bandages and occasionally the site of her pin tracks. I really don’t want to give her the collar (as in Elizabethan collar). What this poor little dog is going through!

(PS: I do have pix but have to resize them)

Doctors, pills and the pug

This week has been a change for us. It started Monday with my discovery that I was overdosing Audrey on her medications. Yikes! It seems that when I was told to give her 1/2 tab with food that my brain stopped functioning as the words continues ‘every 24 hours.’ Because the pup gets two solid meals a day (and probably beacause the other medications she recieved for the giardia were multiple daily doses) I gathered she got the pills 1/2 in the am and 1/2 in the pm. I wondered when one of the drugs ran out.

A call (and glance at the discharge instruction sheet) confirmed that I’d blown in. But there weren’t any signs of distress on her part. Her poop was fine, behavior fine, sleeping fine. She had started leaving her food (odd for a pug), but that was the only sign. Lisa assured me that my mistake seemed not to make a difference, but to stop it now (Monday) since she was returning to them on Wednesday anyway.

Wednesday was the recheck. In in the am and pick her up in the evening. Dr. Canapp was there at drop off and was very impressed by how well she used her braced leg. He said most dogs hold it up for the first week and rarely stand on it. Her exam checked out and she was doing great. I just needed to turn the bolts one more day. But watch her activity.

Today’s Thursday and something has happened. Audrey was less excited this morning when I opened her crate. And as she was awake, was more lethargic, and wouldn’t eat. I gave her a pain pill and she really dragged out. A call to Lisa. She figured that yesterday Audrey was pretty alert, wathcing the action, seeing the other dogs, and combined with the narcotic, was sleeping off the day. Later in the day, Audrey was alert – but her behavior with her leg now simulates what Dr. Canapp expected as seen in other dogs the first week. She doesn’t want to walk on it, and holds it up. She’s still off her food and pretty much just wants to sleep. This evening I cooked a chicken breast and she did like that. I don’t know what’s going on. Perhaps they ‘did something’ to her brace and pins when she visited that is causing her pain. Hopefully there’s not an infection brewing. Even more, I hope this isn’t related to my overdosing her! Maybe this is just her body telling her to s-l-o-w down.

You can’t keep a good pug down!

A few days in this bracelet-fused-to-bone and Audrey is trying to maintain her puppyhood. She easily forgets that she’s not supposed to run, jump, do stairs (up or down), chase the cats, toss and go after a stuffed toy, maneuver couches and beds on her own or just about anything that involves weight on her leg or fast movement. Our words of ‘Audrey, no’ or ‘leave the kitties alone’ are ignored. But she’s such a good dog that she’s easily stopped and corralled (thank heavens she’s not a German Shepard) and scooped into loving arms that will carry her places and keep her movement to a minimum.

But it takes constant vigilance on our part. The truly hard part of helping our little pug princess. We need to know where she is 24/7. This makes for not getting a lot done independently. Patrick is trying to remodel the bathroom. (Is that enough to say for taking out everything to the rafters)? Alice is at school. I’m in and out with work (the semester started this week so my hours on campus are longer each day). It’s fine if we’re in one place for a while and she can be near by. But if we move from room to room either Audrey wants to follow us (a pug-thing independent of the leg issue) or we need to carry her with us (to know what she’s up to). So, Audrey’s surgery did come at a bad time, but like having children, is there ever a completely convenient time for these things???

She’s getting her two pills twice a day, plus pain pill at night that, if it doesn’t go down completely creates the most immediate foaming at the mouth. The cleaning of the areas where the pins go into her leg (it’s ok to be grossed out). And yesterday (drum roll, please) the bolts were turned. In fact, with this morning, I’ve done it 3 times now. It really is easy, just as I’d practiced at the vet’s office. That 10mm wrench to what looks like a four sided dice, two small turns to the right to get the 1 or the 3 dots to face forward, repeat for all three and we’re done. Audrey doesn’t react so I don’t think she feels it. The vet told me stories of people turning them either a) the wrong way and shortening the leg, or b) too much and making the leg longer than the other so of course I’m a bit anxious that we’ll go in on Wednesday to learn that I’m making a mistake.

Audrey is absolutely wonderful – negotiating the device as she finds a spot to sleep, or sit, or walk; putting up with pills and cleaning solutions and occasional mouth foam; not doing what she would love to do; putting up with my telling the stories of her situation, her surgery, her recovery over and over; continuing to look as cute as ever. She is one amazing dog. If Charlotte the spider were in my office, I’d ask her to spin, “That’s Some Pug” in her web.

Back home and decked out in shocking pink!

Alice and I went to pick up Audrey at 4. We didn’ t leave the vet til 6. We had to wait for Dr. Canapp to finish surgery so he could talk with us. His assistant, Lisa, gave us the lowdown on her post-operative care and let us play around with one of the ring fixators so we could master turning the screws.

This is me listening intently to Lisa, Dr. Canapp’s surgical assistant, give me information about Audrey’s care.

Well, this is going to be fun. The 3 pills a day, regular cleaning of the area where the pins go into her leg and return visits to check the recovery are the easy part. What will be hard is keeping this puppy down. She can’t run or do stairs, but we have to encourage her to walk on her leg. She can’t jump on anything, or down from anything. So when she’s with us we make sure that she’s not overdoing it; when she’s not, she has to be in the crate.

And then there’s the really fashionable Elizabethan collar she’ll wear to keep her from licking the stitches. She loves it (hardly).

But she looks great and the doctor reported that she did very well. Her foot should be more swollen considering the surgery, but it almost looks like the other one. She tolerated the anaesthesia well and should respond well to treatment. She’ll be in this contraption (sorry, pictures soon) for 6-8 weeks. The pins gets turned for a week, but the cuff deal stays on like a cast while the bones are healing.

Since the darn thing must be pretty heavy to her, and it sure is bulky (think, wearing an inflated inner tube on one of your legs) they padded it and wrapped it in shocking pink plastic-y bandages. No hunter’s going to miss this puppy out in the woods.

Here’s Alice holding Audrey just before we left for home after her big day on the surgery table:

The great surprise – well, two actually – was that Dr. Canapp took lots of pictures of the procedure. He did this intentionally to share with me, hearing that I was documenting the whole thing. I’ll post a special page of pix when they arrive. The other nice thing was that the cost wasn’t more than the estimate. I thought that when he did the extra work on her wrist he said was necessary due to increased flexing and that he worked on her for 2 1/2 hours that I’d pay more than I expected. Not so. Still is a bite but at least the sting was expected.

Here’s a tip for you pet owners – GET PET INSURANCE! It was never recommended to me and the last I thought about it (at least 10 years ago) it was cost prohibitive. But now its like $20 a month. A woman at the vet’s office said she pays about $525 a year for two dogs. I’m getting it right away – Audrey still have to abandon her femaleness later in the year and with the way she inhales anything on the floor I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a stomach pumping or xray in our future. Plus the kitties may have problems.

Thank you all for your kind thoughts through this. The little girl is sleeping peacefully next to me on the floor, resting her new double bracelet on her bed. I’ll probably give her a pain pill to help us all get a good night sleep.

Susan

technically speaking…

For those of you who watch medical shows or studied anatomy, here’s the doc-speak on Audrey’s condition. And I quote from Dr. Canapp’s notes:

“Radiographs of the left forelimb revealed a portion of the distal radial physis and all of the ulnar physis have closed prematurely. A previous salter harris II fracture was noted just proximal to the distal growth plate. The left radius was approximately 0.5 cm shorter than in the right limb. Carpal valgus and external rotation is noted. Remodeling of the distal radial epiphysis and moderate remodeling and displacement of radial carpal bone were noted.”

Surgical procedures: distal ulnar ostectomy; radial corrective osteotomy and distraction osteogenesis.

whew!