Recovery – Page 2 – Meg the Tripawd

Eyes wide open!

Wowwee, since my last post things took a turn regarding vets and health, fortunately nothing too serious!!

Half way through November, Meg and Dotti got into a fight and Meg came out worse for wear with a nasty eye ulcer. The vets seemed pretty sure her third eyelid would need to be sewn shut for it to heal. Thankfully, they understood Meg had already been through a lot this year and allowed us to opt for natural healing. The bad news was the day Meg’s eye got very bad and needed to be raced into the vet, was the day of her photoshoot she won.

It has taken a few weeks, countless eyedrops, antibiotics, eye serum made from Megs own blood, but finally its looking like the ulcer is healing. Please stay healthy now Meg, and quit picking fights with your sister, they never end well for you!!

Two or three weeks after our original photoshoot date, we finally had our photoshoot with Meg and Dotti. The photos are gorgeous!! I can’t wait to show them off when we receive the files! They beautifully show their stray history, Meg’s battle and her pretty tripawd-ness, and best of all you can see how much we love the girls, and how much they love us!

The only negative out of photoshoot day, Dotti rolled in some grass and got a grass seed stuck in her eye.. Another trip to the vets! By the time we got to the vets the grass seed had fallen out and she just had an itchy, sore eye. We had some squinty twins for a few days!!

With eyes mostly healed and the weather heating up we decided to give our tripawd real test – a trip to the beach! Meg has never loved the beach, but she likes trotting about the shallows. She coped with the sand and the water amazingly, you wouldn’t have even known she was missing a leg. It was Dotti’s first trip to the beach, she adored it, until she same out into the bay after a seagull and realised she couldn’t get back!! She stayed in the shallows after that.

Hope everyone and their pups/cats are happy, healthy and enjoying the holiday period!

Hopping around

It has been 53 days since Meg’s amputation. 7 and a half weeks. 1 month and 3 weeks. However you put it, its finally looking like a distant memory.

It has been a busy few weeks since my last blog for us humans, but not so busy for the pups.

The sun has been out and it is finally feeling like spring, so there have been many trips to the dog park. Everyone still loves watching Meg hop about and marvel at how well she is doing. Kids ask if it will grow back, and run around bragging about seeing a three legged dog.

The warm weather has also meant getting the hose out and watering plants, much to Meg’s delight

When my birthday rolled around, friends of both the human and dog variety gathered at the Dog House, a cafe for dogs. The girls and their friends loved their puppochinos and dog muffins.

Meg has gotten back to her pre-surgery self but destroying her soft toys and ensuring her sister Dotti does not touch them, play with them or even think about destroying them.

The girls found a birds nest which they were very curious about. Lucky it is just out of reach!

Bird chasing video

Investigating the bird nest video

Just yesterday, Meg and Dotti went to tell Santa what they want for christmas and had some photos done with him, in their best christmas costumes. Hopefully we’ll receive those photos in a few weeks and might even be able to send out a few christmas cards with them if anyone wants them!!

Keep hopping Megmoo

One month ampuversary (and two days)

I can’t believe how quickly, but also slowly this month has gone! It seems like a forever ago that Meg was just back from hospital, but also saying “it’s been one/two/three/four weeks since surgery” kept changing over very fast!

Everyday people see Meg at the park and ask what happened to her, always somewhat disappointed to hear a sad cancer story, not a heroic gory story, yet everyone is amazed at how quickly she has recovered. We always see people trying to watch her without us noticing, or on the flip side, people will come from all corners to ask about that three legged dog.

Today we saw our first tripawd since Megs surgery, sadly Meg and that dog didn’t really notice each other, let alone bond! Next time.

Meg can do just about everything she could do before, and is the same joyful, cranky, silly girl. The only thing she can’t do is scratch her ear, but she has learnt if she comes up to us and wags her stump about we’ll scratch for her.

It makes me wonder what I was so stressed about before surgery, and why I was so scared that we’d end up with a different dog on three legs.

In the next few weeks we have a santa paws photo shoot AND a photo shoot with Meg and Dotti that we won not long after Megs surgery.

Happy times ahead!

Stitches are out!

After 14 days, this afternoon Meg took a trip to the vet and got her stitches out! Her wound is looking good and she was given a clean bill of health from the vet*

*we still have to go back in a few months to check the cancer didn’t actually spread

Go Meggymoo!

A trip to the doggo park afterwards was well and truly in order – Meg was very happy to not be held back from chasing other dogs, and running away from other dogs.

Her sparkle is well and truly back, although she is still getting tired easily and has sore muscles, who could blame her for that though! She is missing a leg after all!

Now to get on with life though! Mainly sleep.

Also today, Meg’s lil belly had finally lost enough swelling for her ruffwear web master harness to fit again, and she went for her first walk around the block with it, only the second time she has gone around the block since the surgery! It seemed to help her balance, especially towards the end once she tired.

wp_20161005_09_33_29_pro — Ruffwear Web Master harness (XXS)

Get ready for new adventures as a stitch free tripawd Meg!

Meg knows when we can’t take her straight to the vet!

I swear dogs have a talent of knowing when it is Sunday, which means our regular vet shuts in the early afternoons.

For the last two sundays Meg has presented herself with complications that I would love to call the vet about, or better yet, bring her into the clinic and have her looked at right away. Because I’m a paranoid furmum of course!

Yesterday we were coming home from a short trip, and I went to get the dogs out of the car. They were’t on leads and given there was a dog across the road that they’d run across to, it seemed easier to carry them from the car to the gate into the apartment complex.

In the time it took to pick Dotti up and give her to Tim (a second or two), Meg decided she was ready to jump out the car like she used to as a quad-dog. She landed it, seemed fine. I was furious at her of course.

That was until I saw a bit of blood where she was laying, and some blood across Dotti’s face (get out of it, Dot!). Flipped Meg over and had a look at the incision – about 2 or 3 centimetres of the wound was bleeding, and almost looked like it had come open. The stitches were still in but it didn’t look good! This of course had to happen right before we were due to arrive at a get together around the corner (with the dogs, of course).

All regular vets were closed and calling the 24hr emergency vets for advice seemed costly, especially if she needed to go in there! The internet isn’t helpful for these things, especially when we weren’t even sure what she’d done to the wound. The wound stopped bleeding and looked to be a bit more stuck together again when I looked at it 5 minutes later. We put the cone back on and reluctantly got on with the evening. I was fearing the entire thing would come open, infections, stitches falling out, all sorts of drama that would result in an expensive trip to the 24hr vets. Luckily none of these things happened (although, I wouldn’t be opposed to her having a course of antibiotics), and Meg happily rested and lapped up attention at our friends get together.

Meg is fine, the incision site looked back to normal by the time we went to bed and again this morning.

Lesson learned though – no more exerting yourself before ‘stitches out Wednesday’, Meg!