bathing paws in epsom salts

We're becoming quite expert at bathing Penny's feet in Epsom salts. Here's how we do it:

Penny doesn't mind standing there for five minutes (though we've never made it to ten minutes, as recommended).

Why does she stand so obligingly? Yes, you guessed it. A steady diet of treats the whole time. I think there might have to be some discussion of her weight after a week of no exercise and lots of treats.

Today she had two little walks, each one just mooching around on lawn for five minutes, followed by a wash of her feet. There are only little spots of unhealed skin now. Maybe in a couple of days it will be back to normal. Here's hoping.

when a successful behavior causes an injury to a dog

Dogs are very specific about behaviors they've learned. One of our favorites with Penny is to drop something as we walk along, and then after a minutes or two, cry, 'Oh, no, where is it?'

Penny races back, touches the lost item with her nose, we shout for joy, and she hurries back to us for her reward...
leaving the found object where it is, for a human to collect.

Pretty good trick, lots of fun for us all.

A couple of weeks ago, as we walked at Rosanna, Penny played in the creek and I was throwing her Whirl Wheel into the water, but I accidentally threw it onto the opposite bank, up a metre-high steep embankment.

In retrospect, I know what I should have done. Walked away, philosophical about the lost toy. After all, what did it cost? Fifteen measly dollars!

But I said those words - 'Oh, no, where is it?' and allowed Penny to laboriously pull herself up that little cliff, through the long grass, across the scrubby plants, until she found it. And, to my dismay, she headed back, down the cliff, across the creek and waited for her reward, having shown me where it was.

I had a second chance to let it go, forget the toy. But did I? No - I let her go back again and again, changing my instruction to the usually reliable, 'Find your toy! Get the toy!'

By this time there was a circle of humans gathered, cheering Penny on, and she received a spontaneous round of applause when she figured it out and came back with the toy in her mouth.

So I have only myself to blame that she now has a limp. We went to the vet a couple of days later and he thought it was a problem with the left shoulder, but that it showed no 'structural damage'. It should recover with rest. (By the way, he asked me what I thought I was doing, letting Penny go through grass that most likely hid a poisonous snake...)

But it isn't better. I think we didn't rest enough. (For instance, we went walking with our puppy friend.) So now we're having a no-walks policy for about five days. Lately it has been horrible hot weather here, too hot even at 11 pm to go out for a walk, so that suited us fine.

Today is cool - thank goodness! So I lifted Penny into the car, to convince her we were off for her usual walk, and then lifted her down at a local park that I'd normally consider too boring for a visit. She mooched around in the shade for seven minutes - don't know why I chose seven - and home we came.

She found some interesting smells, I contemplated nature for a while, and I guess it was a win-win.

still resting the cut paw

It's  been a quiet week and I can feel my fitness slipping away and my waistline thickening, because Penny is still confined to the house to wait for her injured paw to recover, and I've discovered I don't walk if I don't have the motivation of taking her with me.

We're starting to play games at dinner time, feeding her meals as rewards for picking up her toys and putting them in the bucket; finding the nominated toy (not too successful); taking a bow; backing up; 'paws up'. Anything to keep her mind active, even if her body is not.

It's darned hard to find activities that don't involve using her front paws. I gave her a Kong filled with nice things (a couple of bits of kibble, a smear of peanut butter, some raw carrot pieces, a bit of cheese) and she worked diligently at it for about twenty minutes. But seeing she was holding it firm with her front paw, this wasn't such a good idea! She ended up with a sore paw.

Not long now, I hope. I think it's nearly healed up. We've been swishing it with saline solution twice a day and squirting Betadine onto the cut. Bandages are giving us lots of entertainment - I crouch on the floor, carefully wrapping her paw in nice clean gauze, see her settled, go away and walk back in to find the bandage on the floor and Penny resting comfortably. Lucky her paw is so small and only needs a short piece of bandage - otherwise I think we'd have gone through even more bandaging than we have. I'll have to refine my bandage-tying technique.

Penny's poor sore paw

On Sunday, Penny cut her front paw while we were walking in the bush.

I guess we've been lucky this has never happened before. However, it did mean that I was unsure how to deal with it. First I washed the cut with salty water, a couple of times, then I bandaged it loosely. Which left the problem of how to go outside for toileting without getting the bandage wet. (We've had lots of rain lately, which you won't find me complaining about after the fifteen or more years of drought we endured.)

Well, that didn't work all that well. There are a couple of plastic bags lying somewhere in the yard, lost within minutes of our going out in the dark.

Today, when we came back to Melbourne, I decided to scout the Net for more information, and found some sites that were quite helpful. I was pleased that Betadine was recommended on some of them, as I've got Betadine spray. So I've sprayed it and put a fresh bandage on, and we'll see how things look tomorrow.

One recommendation that seemed sensible was to wrap only a couple of layers around the paw, because if the bandaging is too thick, the dog will notice it more, and therefore be more likely to lick at it. (I recall from Penny's previous biopsy bandaging how important it is to keep the bandage dry.)

This squidoo says we should rebandage the paw twice a day, so I guess I'll do that.

The Dog Owner's Home Veterinary Handbook says a fresh wound longer than half an inch should be sutured, but says if the wound is older than twelve hours, suturing is questionable. If I'd been in Melbourne I would have taken her straight to the vet to see if stitches would help. But we were too far away.

At the moment she seems to be comfortable, and in fact isn't even limping much. She's taking her weight fully on both front legs.

I'll call the vet tomorrow, to check whether I'm doing the right thing, and I'm going to ask about a recommendation by Julia Szabo on a dogster site, that the wound will heal faster if it is kept soft:

Then, to help speed healing, I applied some Buck Mountain Wound Balm, the same excellent ointment I used on my dog Tiki when he was fighting cancer. This stuff packs the triple healing punch of burdock, yarrow, and echinacea, and is a first-rate item to keep in the K9 first aid kit. Without some kind of ointment to keep the tissue soft, a wound takes longer to heal - and with the location of this wound, recovery speed really counts.

On looking at the Buck Mountain Herbal Gold site, I see that it is recommended for minor cuts and closed wounds, and that using salve on an infection that is not clean and dry might accelerate the infection, so I think I'll definitely ask for advice from the vet before doing anything other than keeping the wound clean and infection-free.

I might try using aloe vera, if the vet says it is important to keep the paw pad soft.

dogs are funny and unpredictable

Living with a dog demands that we see the funny side of life.

Today Penny had her first off-lead walk in two weeks, after a long rest to see if we could settle her scary limp. I took her up our back lane, where we weren't likely to meet other dogs and where she could walk on flat ground.



When she threw herself onto the ground and began to roll around, I was pleased to think that she was revelling in the freedom from confinement.



But wait? Why did she keep rolling in the same spot? And why was she rubbing the side of her head on the same spot?

Yep. Dog poo.

So home to carefully wash the stink off her. (We don't want to bathe her at the moment, for fear of her jumping around and undoing the good all the resting has done.)

Life consists of short walks at the moment, usually about ten minutes. So, when she set off later in the morning for yet another stroll, it seemed like a good idea to try to film her gait and see whether we amateurs could figure out whether she is favoring her left rear knee. On the video tutorial I referred to in yesterday's post, it didn't seem too hard to film a dog walking.

But Penny wasn't having any of it. Why was her human hiding in the street and filming her? She had to check it out.



We did let her walk - the plan was, quietly and sedately - up two little steps to see how she moved, but as the end of the clip shows, she took it at a fast pace, so we hope we didn't do any harm. I guess tonight or tomorrow we'll know how she's been affected.

It's exciting to see her almost back to her old self, but we do realise that if she has a cruciate ligament injury we'll have to deal with it. At the moment, it's just a matter of taking things slowly and seeing how she goes .

Penny rests her cruciate ligament

As Penny rests, and hopefully recovers her health, I’ve been learning more about cruciate ligament injuries. Until this scare I hadn’t realised how prevalent they are in the dog world.

I’ve come across a great Yahoo group, where generous people share their experience of canine orthopaedic issues. I posted a question based on our experience and feel encouraged by what I’ve learned so far:

• Some dogs, if their cruciate is not too badly injured, can recover enough to live a good life without needing surgery. One member said her dog was managed conservatively for 8 years before needing surgery, and another member said that dogs who don’t have a significant injury can do well. She had a dog who did well.



• Make a rehab plan, realise it may be months before Penny is completely well, and don't assume she is recovered just because the limp goes away.



• If all goes well, we’ll go to short walks in the street, longer walks in the street, and then eventually some play in the backyard to see how she goes.



• Being overweight is a big problem for dogs (uh oh!), and being only sporadically active can cause injuries.( I think we don’t have to feel bad about that one, because Penny has been active every day since we got her, barring times when she wasn’t well or there was some difficulty getting out for exercise.)



• It's important to make sure she builds up her strength equally on each side, so that she is symmetrical. (Having a disc problem myself has made me aware of this, as for thirty years I have tended to favor one side of my body, and so I know the problems this brings.)

A few sites I've bookmarked are:
Dealing with Cruciate Ligament Injuries in Labrador Retrievers

Veterinary Orthopedic Sports Medicine Group

Mar Vista Animal Medical Center

Miss Sunshade (yet another gorgeous Airedale) has a very interesting and informative site about her stem cell treatment for an injury.