Digby is now a tripawd and absolutely loving it!!
It is one week post op and the difference between him dragging his dead leg around and hopping around on 3 is incredible. He was back to himself probably not even two days after the amputation. Our biggest issue now is trying to keep him from over exercising and pulling his stitches. While our post op recovery has been smooth sailing before the operation was pretty trying times.
Digby underwent his surgery on a Tuesday and the Friday before this I came home from work to discover that Digby had badly chewed his dead leg. According to google and the emergency vet self mutilation is very common amongst cases like these. The commonality did not stop me from having a heart attack – he was missing two of his toenails I believe and his whole foot was completely destroyed and dripping blood, with the vet unable work with any remaining skin to staple it together.
Unfortunately this was on Friday night at approximately 2am and it was impossible to get an amputation surgery done on the weekend so we had to wait all the way till Tuesday and it was the longest three days of my life. All while Digby was consistently removing his bandaging or bleeding through it. There seemed to be so much blood I was worried that he would have complications during the surgery leading to several emotional breakdowns on the Monday from sheer worry.
However the surgery went without a hitch and while it was incredibly confronting to see Digby without a leg for the first day or two – the vet seemed to think bandaging the shoulder was unnecessary – both he and I have adapted to the situation quite quickly.
We started off with little walks for toilet only but know we can make it till the end of of the street and back and still have energy for a quick zoomie around the front yard. I know I know he shouldn’t be running but he is seriously cooped up, it’s been over a month with no proper exercise the poor kid.
I have ordered a ezy dog convert harness with the tripawd side labels for our walks, which hopefully we can do in the near future. I just need to look into exercises to get his strength and endurance up again. He seems to have it easier running then walking!
Digby the day after his operation.