Gimpy

I'll try to get pictures up as soon as I can.

Remus went to the vet yesterday because one of the vets who see Remus (there are three vets at the office) was just as concerned about Remus's funky leg as I was. The vet explained she doesn't have a lot of experience with these problems in dogs because they're rare, and more often seen in dogs like Pugs and Pekenese. That said she wanted to take some pictures and send them to some Ortho vets to see what they thought and then discuss the possibility of splinting Remus's leg. Long story short, after pictures with Remus's foot cockeyed like an over enthusiastic ballet dancer, we decided an attempt at splinting was at least worth a shot. The vet said he still walks fairly straight on it, and it's less noticible when he stands as well unless he's looking back over his R shoulder. Her educated guess is that either one side of the bone is growing faster than the other, or more likely it's ligament issues. Either way, the splint would provide extra support until it hopefully fixes itself.

Remus left the vet with a splint allowing two little toenails peeping out the bottom and wrapped all the way up to just below his shoulder. Also, he is supposed to wear the giant donut collar to keep from chewing on his splint. He wore the collar all yesterday and he looked so pathetic and miserable! It was cute and he was unintentionally amusing running into things with the collar on. To make matters worse, the vet explained the worst part of the splint is we had to keep it dry, so she gave me a few IV bags and told me to put it over his foot in wet wheather and tape it down. Well, the east coast is currently getting slammed with snow, ice, and freezing rain. This morning I dutifully taped on the IV bag with Army green duct tape like a ridiculous plastic bootie and then let Remus walk outside to do his business. He took one tentative step on the ramp and almost went sliding to the bottom. He stepped back hastily and stared at me with pathetic miserable puppy eyes. I put my shoes on and assisted my poor gimpy slipping puppy down the ice crunchy ramp to the ground below. Watching him walk with the stiff leg and extra slick bootie was much more amusing than it should've been. He would take one step with his normal leg, then a step with his wrapped up leg and slide so his nose was almost on the ground. I feel bad for him. Getting him back up onto the porch was a whole new challenge.

I finally gave in and took the collar off. I'm a sucker. I sprayed his leg thoroughly with icky stuff to deter him chewing on it and I stayed in the ktichen with him to make sure it was working. I've been checking on him every few minutes, but I'm going to have to put the collar back on if I want to stay in any other part of the house for longer than ten minutes at a time. Poor pathetic puppy. I'll post pictures as soon as I get some.