Lessons From and For 4 Legs

Well the limp is still mysterious, although not so much now that we went to the vet today.

We saw a new vet, a surgeon who does more work with injuries, he was great. Thanks to those of you who recommended him, you didn’t steer me wrong.

First he narrowed the pain down as coming from Magnus elbow on his left leg. Then of course he scared me to death by listing two things that require surgery to fix. One thing that was structural. Then mentioning what we already knew, that it could “just” be a soft tissue injury.

Five x-rays and a couple hundred dollars later he gave me the news. It’s not surgical (Huge sighs of relief were heaved by me, Magnus was still out of it and loopy from being put under for the x-ray.) His shoulder does have some malformation in it, it’s not severe, but it could be causing the pain. If you look in the x-ray of the left elbow you can see the space around the ball of the joint is not all even. It’s looser on one side and tighter on the other. In the right shoulder the space is all even so it’s fine.

It’s good news, except that there’s very little to do for him if that is the cause of the pain. The treatment basically consists of an injection of fluid to cushion the joint. We won’t know if we’re doing that for two to three weeks because first he wants to rule out a soft tissue strain.

To rule out a soft tissue strain Magnus is on restricted activity. No walks over a mile or a half hour. No jumping, hopping, skipping, zooming, running, climbing, or wrestling. In other words, no being Magnus. For how long does he have to endure such torture? The first figure the vet threw out there was 14 days. I must have looked and sounded appalled when I said, “14 more days?!? His head will explode!” I was thinking, “And so will mine!” but managed not to whine that out loud. At that point he took pity on us and said, “Okay, how ’bout 10?” Of course I told him if Magnus needs 14 days we’ll give him 14 days, but UGH! It’s going to be a long two weeks.

After three weeks if he’s still not 100% then we’ll do a K-laser treatment and the injection. After today’s bite out of the old wallet I didn’t even ask what that would cost me. Here the sighs are not of relief, but in dread. So for his and my wallets sake let’s hope he gets feeling tip-top soon!

Now you may be wondering what his limp has to do with his ear. Nothing, it just made a funny title for the post, but his ear did cost me $100.00 dollars today. Well, having the fox tail removed cost that. Did I already say Ugh in this post? Let me follow it with an Arghh, then.

"Did you hear I can't do ANYTHING fun? It's so lame!!"

Fox tails are the true weed of the devil. This one had a story behind it. I’ve been doing nightly foxtail searches on both dogs, but Magnus in particular. He’s like a sticker magnet! Well, I saw two foxtails on his ear and quickly devoted them to destruction. Then I saw IT. The foxtail was already in his ear canal, just out of reach. I hollered for Mehusbandy to get the tweezers, but by the time he ran them to me, it was too late. The slippery bugger was gone! Turns out it was gone right to Magnus eardrum. Let’s see I used ugh and argh, I’ll just give this one a solid bleck!

So that was why Magnus ended up getting his first dose of anesthetic since he has been my boy-to remove a lousy foxtail! I’m just glad we got it soon enough, the dog the vet saw before Magnus had a foxtail removed that had already pierced it’s eardrum. I don’t even have an exclamation strong enough for that one!

Thus the first half of the day was spent diagnosing the still slightly mysterious limp and removing the weed of the devil. Magnus has spent the last half splayed out in exhaustion from his adventure and woozy from the drugs. I’m enjoying the quiet before the storm of crazy he will unleash on me when he finds out he can only walk a mile a day and for the next two weeks the world can not be his jungle gym. Poor boy!