Little Pie

My baby pop Lucy has had a rough night. When I got home from work she got out of her crate and immediately went for a treat she had left on the rug in the living room this morning. That is normal for her because she is obsessive pie. I was trying to get her to go outside, but of course she wanted that treat. All of a sudden she lets out this horrible painful yelp and she just kept yelping. It sounded like she had been hit by a car or something. At the same time it looked like her little back legs gave out on her so I picked her up and she had her back legs all tensed and crossed and brought up towards her stomach. She was shaking like a leaf. It scared the ba-jesus out of me so I took her to the vet. She had some problems with her left back leg popping out of place a while ago and she would limp around, but she never cried out like this or at all, so this was definitely cause for concern.

When we got to the vet, the vet looked at her and said she most likely has a disc out of place in her back or blown out or something (I can't remember exactly what she said). She did a few tests where she turned her paw in to see how fast she corrected it which I think that was to test her reflexes and she also pinched her foot to test her response to that. Both tests are done to check neurological response or something. The vet recommended that I take her to an emergency vet in Burleson because she might require immediate surgery. By this time I am doing all I can to keep it together.

Anyway, we leave the vet by the house and start driving to the Burleson vet. I called them on my way and they said they couldn't do surgery, but they could check her out and keep her overnight then have me take her to another vet who could perform the surgery if necessary. I am not thinking clearly at this point, but I did turn the car around to head back to the house. I called Frank and said maybe I was being hasty and needed to go home and watch her for a bit to see how she does. He said to not do that and to go ahead and take her so I went home and put Todd back up and got Lucy in her crate to take her to the emergency vet. I ended up taking her to the I-20 vet because it was much closer and they could do the same thing the Burleson vet was going to do.

The vet there checked her out and did and x-ray and didn't think it was a disc or back problem because all her vertebrae had spaces between them (it made sense with what he was telling me and what I was looking at). She was walking ok too, not perfect, but ok. He said he did those other tests on her to check her reflexes and she passed them fine. It's possible that she was just too tensed up and scared when the first vet did the tests. Who knows? Anyway, the x-ray did show that her bowels were very impacted and could have very well been the problem. He gave her an enema and she did go for the vet.

The first vet gave her a steroid shot, the 2nd vet gave her some pain medication and an enema, so when we got home, she was drooling excessively so I called the vet and they said it was probably from the enema and sedating effects of the painkiller.

Now she is a sleepy pie and the drooling has stopped. I am going to watch her throughout the night and take her to our local vet in the morning so they can watch her during the day tomorrow. I am sure she will be ok, but it’s just precautionary. These dogs are my babies so I would rather be safe than sorry.

Anyhoo...I am going to be one tired lady tomorrow. I will post again about her progress tomorrow.

(Oh, and Todd has been a very sweet older brudder by checking on her all the time.)