Doggie Update

It is now two weeks since Little Sally Pumpkinhead's surgery.  She had her stitches and e-collar  removed on Monday and is no longer on pain meds or tranquilizers.  We no longer have to do the flexion (Doctor word.) and extension exercises on her elbow joint either, so life is a little easier.  On the negative side she is feeling so much better that it is hard to keep her quiet and her activity limited to 5 minute leash walks.  What she wants to do is chase squirrels and play with Duke or us.

An interesting thing about the pain meds and tranquilizers,  while she was taking them together they worked very well.  Once the pain meds were off the table and we only had the tranquilizers things changed.  The first day off the pain medicine the tranquilizer did not seem to works as well so for her night time dosage we increased the amount. Since we we giving her the minimum allowed  up to that point we did  did not think anything about it.  Now that I have  perused some of the Vet forums I see what went wrong.  These tranquilizers have a boomerang effect on some dogs and instead of calming them down the product revs them up.

I have told you before about Little Sally Pumpkinhead exhibiting  "tiny bear on crack" behavior when she was younger but now that she is older she has calmed down some.  She still has episodes of TBOC but this mostly occurs at bedtime.  Any of you who have had small children knows what this is like.  Well, guess who was revved up by the tranquilizers?    Yep, Little Sally Pumpkinhead.  Instead of a tiny bear on crack that night we had a tiny bear on crack who had just slammed down 20 cups of espresso.   She was so out of control I finally had to put her in her crate and throw a blanket over it just to calm her down.  Needless to say, but I will say it anyway, we have not given her another tranquillizer since that night.

She is still a handful but we are keeping her as quiet as possible by limiting her movements.  She is in her pen except when it is time to go outside on her leash walk or for bathroom breaks.   We find that giving her a chewy in the morning and one before bedtime helps too.  She is healing remarkably fast so, hopefully, she will not be out of commission as long as the doctor has predicted.  Oh, please, please, please, please, please.