A small update

We took Spencer to our family vet today.  He doesn’t think that this is anything serious, most likely a soft tissue injury or some sort of sprain.  Spencer was running around FINE last night around midnight.  When he got up this morning and had the limp I at first thought that maybe his leg was asleep; but when it didn’t get better in 10 minutes I realized that couldn’t be the problem.

He is bearing SOME weight on it; but about every third step he tries to hop along with only 2 legs.

The vet is doubtful that it is a break or fracture since for a dog Spencer’s size that would usually be an injury that kept them from putting any weight on the leg.  His hip seems fine and so does his foot.  No obvious injuries to the foot.

We went ahead and left him overnight at the vet for them to be able to observe him and in the morning they are going to run him to their other office for digital x-rays (the office we normally go to is about to move, the building they are in can’t handle the power needs for the digital x-ray machine that they already bought).  That way we can at least have a baseline x-ray and can hopefully rule out any bone problems.

I’ll be honest, I am a little worried since this last tumor started with Spencer having a slight limp.  That was the only symptom he had in June; but the limp quickly got better and I didn’t give it a second thought until August when we found the tumor.  Who knows if that limp actually had anything to do with the cancer…

The vet thinks it is unlikely that this is a new tumor since Spencer has been on chemo for 15 weeks.  There is definitely nothing that we can see.

The dog/house sitter will be picking Spencer up from the vet tomorrow (hopefully).  The vet doesn’t expect any surprises and really, if most dogs had gone in with this they would at most have gone home with an NSAID and told to watch it and not be too crazy.  But… between Spencer being a tripaw and the cancer… we are just being cautious.

My youngest daughter didn’t want to have Spencer stay and didn’t want the dog sitter picking Spencer up tomorrow.  She said she wasn’t sure if she could trust him with taking good care of Spencer.  haha  We went over and hung out with the sitter for a bit and she feels better now.

If something bad does come up tomorrow, I’ll likely fly back from our trip.  Luckily my mom and step dad are going with us, so they can stay with the kids and get them to all of their ski lessons and stuff.  But I sure hope I don’t have to miss all of it!

I’ll update tomorrow night once I know how the x-rays come back (and I’m settled at the rental house).

A little worried

We have a 2:30 appointment at the vet.  Spencer woke up this morning and he is trying to limp.  His back right leg seems to have something wrong with it.  I can’t find anything, he doesn’t yelp; but he also is trying his hardest to not use that leg.  Him not yelping though doesn’t comfort me much… through all of this he has only shown that he was in pain one time and that was the day after his amputation when he tried to stand up and then fell forward on his incision.

We are up at the cabin, so 2 hours from our vet, hence the few hours until we will get in to see them.  Any good thoughts you can send him would be much appreciated.  Ugh.  We fly out tomorrow for a 10 day trip with him having a dog sitter at the house.  this is such a bad time, now I don’t want to go!  I’ll update you guys when we get back from the vet.