Amputation. Did we do the right thing? Right now it feels like we didn't.

[JesusInTheCabbageVan]

Please reassure me. Our greyhound developed a painful lump in his hind leg which turned out to be cancer. The vet said it's probably spread already, so we had a choice of amputation (which would buy him a few more months pain-free, till more tumours grew) or palliative care - strong painkillers till things got unbearable and then put him to sleep. We opted for amputation, reasoning that it was best for him to spend the last few months happy and pain-free and spoiled rotten

We got him back today. He's bruised, frightened and depressed, and won't eat or drink. He can barely walk and it takes him up to 1/2 an hour to figure out how to lie down. The vet's been brilliant; I just didn't understand the full impact it would have on him. I just thought: leg off, pain gone, problem solved. Idiot.

I know it's early days, but right now it feels like we've made a terrible mistake. Tell me things will get better for him...

Glad to hear he is home ,good luck for the weekend .

Wishing you and him all the best, Jesus.

Thanks

Up with him every hour last night, but no 1am gore explosions so wheeee. Our toddler had his best night's sleep ever too - 7 till 7 with only one waking. It's like they take it in turns to be a PITA. Someday when I'm tidying I'll discover their rota.

Not quite the same obviously, but our spaniel had to have her eye removed as it ulcerated and wouldn't heal. She was 13 and we spent a long time deciding whether or not we were doing the right thing. For about the first week she was very nervous and didn't venture far and bumped into things a lot. She soon managed to retrain herself and worked out how to get around without crashing about, and was helped by the lab who used to round her up and point her in the right direction on walks.

Once your dog is over the physical stress of surgery and the blood clotting complication I expect he'll take a while to work out how to do things with 3 rather than 4 legs, and adjust his balance accordingly - once he has his confidence back I'm sure he'll be happy again.

How's he been doing, Jesus? We were at the Great Greyhound Gathering yesterday and I was thinking of you as I saw quite a few amps - all of whom were having a great day and managing very well.

Hi Scuttle.

He shit us up a bit today because he started refusing food again. Refused bread, posh tinned dog food, DS's crisps - all treats he'd usually wolf down. Then when we had our dinner he suddenly perked up and did his floating greyhound sadface begging routine. Turns out he's just been holding out for something really tasty. So tonight for his tea he's had:

Roast pork
My crackling
Roast potatoes
Baked mashed squash
Gravy

He's going to be utterly ruined after all this is over. We'll never get him back onto dog food.

frosty he's getting around a lot better already, and he's figured out how to lie down which is a great help. Prior to that he kept lying down on his bad side and we'd have to flip him over.

Mostly, that sounds completely normal for our four greys

They adore roast pumpkin/squash so we always do a big tray of it and they have it with their food. I have very happy memories of our elderly bitch (sadly no longer with us) demolishing DH's exquisite Yorkshire puddings.

If you know your time is limited with him even after the amp, then so what if he's spoiled rotten.

We didn't do the right thing. There wasn't a happy ending I'm afraid.

Yesterday I took him to the vet in the morning for a check up and she commented on how well he looked. He was getting around OK, seemed interested in what was going on, ate a few treats etc. His temperature was quite high (39.5) but he seemed OK. At this point we were both really encouraged.

During the morning he was fine, but at lunchtime he seemed to be going off food again. I cooked him three fishfingers, and he took ages to get through them which wasn't the case previously. He also looked a bit tense generally.

By 3pm he was quite restless and whining - he was due another dose of Tramadol anyway so I thought that was the problem. However, he just went downhill from there. I gave him a second pill but it made no difference. By the time DH got home he was pacing back and forth, crying, really stressed and confused. He kept going into random places like he was trying to hide from whatever was hurting him At one point he lay down with his head in my lap, but I just couldn't help him.

We got an emergency appointment with the vet at 18:20 - DH took him while I stayed at home with our 21mo DS. The vet couldn't say what was wrong - it wasn't an infection, but other than that she didn't know. In the end we just decided: enough is enough. It was at the point where we were just throwing money at the problem and prolonging his suffering. It would have been different if this had just been a little set-back, but since coming back from the op he hasn't been "right". He's barely drunk anything (we've been force-feeding him water all this time) and just generally hasn't seemed happy. We simply couldn't afford another extended overnight stay at the OOH vet surgery - we exceeded our insurance limit some time ago. I know in an ideal world that shouldn't be a factor, but it is. Anyway, he's out of pain now. It's hard, but I do just feel like we made the only decision we could make in the circumstances. Like I said to the vet, we've been saying "Just give it one more day" for a week now. How many times do we say "just one more day"? We're just a bit shell-shocked now. If only they'd been able to say "It's x, and y will make him better..." but we didn't feel it would be fair to put him though another couple of days of tests, only to come back with a possible diagnosis and lengthy treatment which we probably couldn't afford and might not even work.

So there we go. Sorry for the rambling update.

Really really sorry for you

Oh bless. You poor things. You did the right thing. Both times. You tried hard to make him better.

Im so sorry, you did the right thing, you loved him and took care of him and let him go when it was right.

Be kind to yourselves.

You did what you could to make his future better - but you took the right decision when you had to. Its not easy - we lost our old girl to cancer on her hind leg last autumn - we had her booked in for a biopsy to see if any treatment would have been beneficial but cancelled it as she was obviously going downhill too quickly - she was too old to cope with just three legs at that stage.

Just reassuring you that you did the right thing initially - I know several tripods - one, a large lurcher, won a race the weekend before last against a 4 legged lurcher (albeit one leg not working as well). The other is a grey who has lost his front leg due to an accident - this is obviously much more difficult than a back leg but he still manages.

Sorry for your loss - you will remember more of the good times and less of his end in time.

I am so sorry for your loss. I am an ex vet nurse and have seen this too many times. I also lost m6 lovely rottie to this bastarding disease :( I hate to say this but im actually quite cross with yoir vet. Usually by the time of diagnosis it has already spread it is such an aggressive cancer. Did they do a chest xray? That is our first step usually when making decisions. If secondaries are found we advise pts sooner rather than later. I do know of one dog. Another rottie that had an amputation and was cured but once its spread the end comes quickly.

I'm so sorry for your loss but I agree that you did the loving, responsible thing. It hurts like hell, I know but as you say, at least your lad's suffering has come to an end.

I hope today isn't too painful for you all.

You did do the right thing , and yesterday you did the right thing as well .sorry for your loss .

Sorry to hear this, and for your loss. You have to call a halt sometime, and you obviously did your best for him.

Bless you. You did the right thing, remember the happy times with your dog xxx

Thanks everyone. Thanks mistlethrush too - the story of the three legged dog beating the four legged one made us both laugh. I can imagine the loser's owner was very

LEM the vet did an x-ray and lymph node biopsy and both were clear. He did say that that we should take that with a pinch of salt as it had probably spread anyway. I do wish he'd been a bit more open about the down-side to amputation - he presented it as near enough 100% a good thing which would give him a pain-free last few months. Then again, it's too tempting to lay the blame elsewhere and we do recognise that, if we had gone for palliative care, things would have been much much worse. It spread so fast - we're pretty sure that as soon as the biopsy cast came off, his leg would have collapsed. Getting him PTS under those circumstances would have been horrible and we would forever have felt like we put him through it out of sheer tight-fistedness.

The awful thing about all this, though, is that we felt like we were being given a second chance. Whilst he always got fed and got treats and had his walks twice a day, there were plenty of occasions when he was overlooked due to us chasing round after a crazed toddler. Also times when I snapped at him on walks because DS was being difficult and I just wanted to get moving, when all he was doing was being a normal dog and trying to have a sniff around. This was meant to be our chance to make all of that up to him. We'd only just started.

No, the loser's owner didn't mind that her dog came second - she was just happy that her dog was being given the chance to have a race and run as they were bred to do, in a safe way, and 'against' a dog that was also not 100%.

Don't feel bad about snapping at him etc - he would still have known that he was loved and cared for - was he an ex racer?

With clear xrays I would possibly have made the same decision as you did. I actually had a three legged cat who the day after the op was jumping around like she always had three legs and yhe rottie I mentioned managed fine despite being a huge dog and it was a front leg.

Its a bastard disease and that type being the badtardist of them all. My cousin lost her son to bone cancer he was 22 :(

You loved your dog and made the bedt decisions at each stage given the info youu had.

I'm so sorry Jesus - that's such an unfair way to have things turn out.

My lab cross was diagnosed with bone cancer in May of this year and was PTS weeks later. As she was 11, the option of amputation was not considered, but the vet did mention it as something they did with younger dogs where the cancer hadn't yet moved to the chest. My girl was put on anti-inflammatories and painkillers, but even though they picked her up for a week, she quickly became lame in the affected leg, so even if the treatment kept the majority of the pain down, it didn't do enough to keep her going. Had she been younger I probably would have done exactly what you did; fought as hard as possible to keep her alive and happy and healthy.

I really do think you did the right thing based on the information you were given. I do agree with LRD that the vets should have done a chest x-ray before doing the amputation, but that's not your fault; you had your boy's best interests at heart throughout this hard, heartbreaking time.

( sorry - LEM, not LRD )

(also, sorry - x-posts, am at work, so typing really slowly)

So sorry Jesus, but you have done the right thing. Taking care of these gorgeous hounds can sometimes break your heart, but they give so much. He's at peace now. Remember that thanks to your family, when he died, he did so with a name, a family and knowing he was loved - sadly for too many greyhounds, this isn't the case.

Sending best wishes to you and your family xx

So sorry for your loss.

We seriously considered amputation when Oldgirl was diagnosed back in April. Our usual vet had told us it would already have spread and is incredibly painful, so pts was the best and only option, but they could keep her comfortable for a few days for us to say our goodbyes.

The second appointment our usual vet was away, so we had to see a different, more senior vet. He questioned whether it was osteosarcoma saying it was in an atypical location and the bone pattern could be attributed to bone infection - then he tried to push us into amputation. He was similar to your vet, in that he gave us the impression it would be fairly straightforward, she would recover well and gain months of good quality, pain-free life. He actually castigated us for going for palliative, saying that if it was osteo the pain wouldn't be properly controlled no matter what we did and amputation was the only way to get rid of the pain.

Our first vet had not doubt it was osteo and neither did we. I did a lot of research and while the position was unusual, the pattern on xray was textbook. We were also concerned that she seemed to have started coughing/spluttering. At first we weren't sure if it was just odd breathing due to the heavy painkillers, so we called our normal vet and she suggested we xray her chest.

They tried to do the xrays with her awake, but she was such a stoic bugger when it came to pain that she wouldn't lie still, so they gave her a very mild sedative. They found numerous small lesions throughout her lungs and there was no doubt they were secondaries. They also realised that somehow in less than 48 hours since she last saw the vet she had suffered a pathological fracture, so we had to let her go there and then.

You can only make choices based on the information you are given and we have to trust the experts. You did the right thing at the time, with the information you had and your boy's best interests at heart. With clear xrays and lymph nodes all the indications many of us would have made the same decision. Then, when the time came you let him go, which is the greatest act of love any of us can give our dogs.

As for feeling bad about not having time for him sometimes and occasionally being short with him, it's all part and parcel of family life, he knew he was loved and you being snappy occasionally wouldn't have changed that. No-one is able to be perfect, calm and balanced 100% of the time and we always have regrets when we lose a loved one. You didn't have anything to make up for him. You gave him a loving family home, fed him fish fingers and roast dinners and he knew how much he was loved.

Take care of yourself and give yourself time to grieve.