DOGS RULE !!! To share all the good times for being dog lovers.

Well we go in for surgery tomorrow , today has been good for Mya, although they rarly do much in this heat . They both have been in the house baby sitting the airconditioner since late morning. This morning she saw the neibours young boys near the fence and tried to dart over to see them, forgetting her situation we guess , and lost her step ending in a bit of a chest slide in the grass. She scrambled up and kept on to the fence to say hi. Didn’t appear to do any harm to her at all. Scared the crap out of Allison though. We will soon prep the house for fasting after midnight, we have a couple of ponds here that she could sneek a drink from if she manages to sneek out of sight for a second, she can be stealthy.

Well its been two days since we were told that Mya is healthy and strong enough for surgery , and in two days she is booked for amputation of her right front leg. For the last few weeks she has had a hard time with the pain, untill last week. Thurs. morning we went in for our consultation she had had a quiet night and hasen’t cried out since. except to wake us up in the morning. yesterday she came down the stars to the basement ” our office” , later that night she hopped up on the bed and down again. Her new found viger had me second guessing our decision. As I’ve watched her these last few days I can see that she doesn’t use the right leg when she is getting a little active. When she sits she will curl the paw under and rest on the back of her paw, seemingly to relieve tention on the tendons near the sholder.
Shes a fighter… its like she is in training. I keep wanting to make her lay down and rest, which she does a lot, but when she has had enough sit’n around . she will just get up and hop down the stairs, and go see whats going on outside.
Thats the other thing I’ve noticed, she preferrs to take the stairs… just over 8 years ago we had a single male Malamute “Cy”, he was 13 years old and had a condition that affected his spine and he slowly lost the use of his back legs. I had built a set of ramps leading from the back porch to the deck and from the deck to the ground so Cy could make it up to the back door. I was never able to bring my self to take them down and we still use them today. I have noticed that Mya would rather take the stairs ” flat footed” instead of the ramp. Her paws tend to slide slightly as she hops down the ramp, up is no problem though.
We are thinking of resurfacing with something that has a bit more traction, or redesign to a long tread short rise type of stairs.
so far its another good day .
Time to feed the kids…

Hi Tripawds…
This is the first time posting here .
My name is Terry and my fiance Allison and I got the most devastating news last week , that our beautiful Alaskan Malamute , “Mya” was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma in the shoulder of her right front leg. 5 weeks ago she was running around with “Macleod” our male , like a freight train , they have actually knocked us over if we didn’t see them coming and get out of the way in time. 4 weeks ago she had a hard time getting up off the floor for a treat , and from that day forward it seemed to get worse each day. After a few days of no apparent recovery we took her to our vet, and there was no evident sign of pain by manipulating the joints in that leg so we tried some pain meds and a joint lubrication med as well. This helped somewhat but by the end of that week it seemed to be getting worse. We booked an Xray and discovered she had some signs of arthritis in the elbow joint of the front leg, she was limping but not yet vocalizing her pain. We started her on a more advanced joint medication, and that also seemed to help. We booked another Xray for the following Tuesday, but on Friday July 22 Allison called me at work and told me Mya was having a bad day and crying a lot . I made a call to the vet and she perscribed Tramadol and said if she was still crying by the morning to bring her in on saturday for the Xray, the tramadol settled her down, so we waited for the day that wasn’t so hectic at the vet to minimize Mya’s stress about the whole procedure (Xray req. sedation etc.). The Xray showed a large tumor at the shoulder Joint , so we made an appointment with a specalist referred by our vet and brought Mya in for a consult . They looked at the Xrays we brought with us and did an exam of her other legs and a CT scan as well as blood work. We got the results this morning and she is strong and healthy enough for surgery and there is no visable evidence of spread to heart and lungs. Today we shed tears of joy that we will still have ” Mrs. kisses ” { she cant hold her licker } around for a while longer to bring us smiles and relentless kisses…
One thing I have learned about this whole event is that dogs are very strong and have a high tolerance for pain and if they are hurting , by the time it gets unbearable enough to vocalize their pain it is already bad. Our dogs will muscle through pain that would stop us in our tracks, so if you notice your pet in distress even a little have them looked at by your vet !!! If your dog hates going to the vet , they will get over it likley as soon as you pick them up. Dogs live in the moment … Thats why we have decided to go ahead with the amputation surgery next week. This is the hardest descision we have ever had to make and reading the posts here and talking with others who have had to deal with this has made our choice a lot easier to swallow.

Remember that early detection is the best protection…

I will post again soon.

Terry , Allison, Mya, Macleod.

Mya

Macleod

Mya saying “not a chance buster”

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