Since she’s hopping around more and more I just noticed she seems to be developing sores on the pads of her feet on remaining rear leg. When I noticed them 2 days ago I rinsed her feet off with water and put some neosporin on the sores and coconut oil on the other areas and other feet pads.

We still have snow up here right now and a lot of puddles with icemelt so I’m sure that was drying out her pads really quickly and they already look better today, before they were pink and red 🙁

Anyone else run into this happening on a regular basis and any advice on how to prevent it? I’m not looking forward to trying booties, I don’t think she will take well to them. I have heard people using balloons to cover the feet (and mostly give traction on slippery floors) so I might give that a shot before investing in some booties and see if she will tolerate that at all first.

Here is what they look like today, healing somewhat well:

Had more blood work done today, and WBC & platelets are up to normal levels so we are on for the 2nd chemo treatment for Monday the 24th! Doxie had been doing great and running around like crazy, we can’t wait for all the snow to finally be gone from the yard so we can really see what she can do!

Only issue is she has a few spots on her foot pads on her remaining rear leg that look like abrasions of some kind. I started rinsing off her feet (lot of icemelt in the puddles everywhere up here so they can really get dried out) and rubbing a little coconut oil on the other pads and a little neosporin on the pads with the sores. Hoping we won’t have to go to booties of some kind because that will be a whole other adventure in itself!

Doxie had her first blood work today 1 week post her first chemo treatment. Her white blood cell counts are lower than what they were the morning she started chemo, and so are her platelets but that was to be expected. She will have her blood work done every week while on chemo to monitor everything so we can adjust (if necessary) when her next chemo session will be but we are still on track for a treatment every 3 weeks, 6 treatments total. 5 more to go! She’s in great spirits and we are enjoying happy pain free time together 🙂

Amy & Doxie <3

The 2 days before she got the stitches out (12 days post surgery) Doxie was just like her old self again! She was running up and down the hall, hopping up on the window sill to look outside, and bark at the mailman 🙂

She was not happy to go back to the vet to get the stitches out, she knows where we are when we pull in the parking lot….lol…poor thing starts to shake every time. Stitches were out and Vet said the incision looked good and now on to chemo!

She had her first chemo treatment on Monday (4/3/17) and she will have a total of 6 treatments, one every 3 weeks with blood work in-between to monitor her white blood cell counts. She is getting Carboplatin administered through IV so we drop her off in the morning and pick her up on our way home from work. She was very groggy when we picked her up but she was running for the door and wanted to get home! We got her home and up the stairs into bed with the help of the harness (since she was still really groggy from the sedative used to keep them calm and still for the IV) and she passed out and didn’t move until about 10pm when I started to give her a few kibbles of her food (she hadn’t even been interested in eating dinner before then). She started whining about 11pm and then we brought her her food and water dish and she ate, slowly, but she ate which was good. Started whining again after that but soon stopped and fell asleep again.

Very lethargic the next morning….we mixed a packet of the probiotic powder the vet gave us with her food and I don’t think she’s a big fan of it, or she still is having a bit of a poor appetite.  She ate about half her food and seemed pretty weak, she had some crazy burps come out so I gave her a dose of the anti-nausea meds from the vet and that seemed to help.  She has gone #1 but no #2 yet, which is a bit odd. I brought her to work with me and she slept in the corner of my office and hardly moved at all. She seemed to get a little more active around 4pm and when we got home a little after 5pm she ate the rest of her breakfast and her whole dinner and had a bully stick. So appetite is back and she seems to have more energy by the hour. Still no #2…… : /

And now I’m caught up to today! She ate 90% of her breakfast this morning and no crazy burbs, much more peppy this morning and was waiting by the top of the stairs to go to work with me. Still no #2, but my work must have done the trick because right when we got there she started hopping to the back door and success! She’s been napping on and off today but more active and hopped around the office once or twice to get petted and treats from my coworkers. 🙂

Blood work on Tuesday is next and then 2nd chemo treatment on the 24th – we can do this!

Amy & Doxie <3

I completely forgot to mention that before we wanted to go through the agony of making the decision to amputate or not I wanted to get the lung x-ray done to see if it had already spread. If it had, we knew it was too late and if not, we would schedule the surgery. On our way to the vet just a few blocks from our house a dog came bolting down the sidewalk with their owner not far behind, it was a tripawd 🙂 He looked so happy and was running so fast it was amazing!

My husband said, “That’s a sign if I’ve ever seen one that we are going to get good news today”, and we did!

Fast forward a few days to her surgery – It was a bit longer than what I anticipated, about 4 hours! Our vet told us we would be taking her home the same day…. I hadn’t seen anyone post anything about taking them home the day of surgery but our vet said that she was going to be uncomfortable regardless so he’d rather have them be at home. They made sure she was stable before we went to pick her up and she hopped out to meet us when we got there! Definitely groggy from the anesthesia but happy to be on her way home. The first night wasn’t fun, period. Looking back on it I’m glad she was at home with us instead of at the vet, even though it was pretty hard. We got her to lay down within a few minutes and she slept for about 1/2 an hour and then started pacing and whining and would not lay down, the cone didn’t help either 🙁

Since the surgery took longer she did come home with a bandage, only to cover lidocaine patches around the incision that the vet felt she needed since it took so long. Even though she was stressed out by the cone we kept it on her 24/7 for the 3 days after the surgery because of how toxic the patches are and to make sure she didn’t consume one of them. After the 3rd day we took the patches off and from then on we ended up leaving the cone off most of the time. As long as we were right there in case she went after the incision, otherwise even leaving her for more than a minute we would put the cone on and always at night. We ended up getting an inflatable one and that worked SO much better as she had her peripheral vision back and I think that was her biggest issue with it in general.

She had a little swelling and we iced a few times for about 2 days and really went down quick. We used a regular hot/cold pack for the main part of the incision and for the more sensitive end area by her tail we found that freezing a damp washcloth worked great, it wasn’t too cold and was easily molded to fit the area. She had her surgery on a Thursday and she woke us up for her first poop at 2am on Sunday 🙂

Stitches were out 2 weeks later (3/23/17) and she had her first chemo yesterday – more on that next time.

<3 Amy & Doxie