Day: January 1, 2010

Our 8 year old Wheaten Terrier, Holly, came home on Wednesday, 12/30, from her surgery.  She was diagnosed with bone cancer in her right hind leg, and that leg was amputated on Tuesday.  She’s doing fine so far – she has some experience with being 3 legged since she had surgery on that leg about 8 weeks ago to remove part of her femur so we could figure out what was going on with her leg.  So, she’s been more or less using only 3 legs since that earlier surgery, which we think may be helping her with getting around now.  So far she’s in good spirits, and is eating and drinking well.  We’re happy to have her home!  She wants to get back to her old routine – we’re trying to keep her quiet for now.

We brought Holly into our vet because she was out of sorts – we thought she had pulled a muscle in her neck on a walk.  After examining her, he thought the same thing and gave her some muscle relaxants and pain meds.  He wanted us to bring her in if the pain didn’t subside so he could take x-rays.  2 days later she was back to being out of sorts, so we took her in.  Her right hind leg femur looked distorted in the x-ray, so our vet sent it to a specialist to review – they decided it would be best to remove the part of the femur that was bad so she had surgery in early November to remove the top portion of her femur.  When the pathology report came back she was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, and surgery was recommended to amputate the leg.  Additional x-rays give us some hope that it has not spread, and her blood work looks good.  Our vet went back through old x-rays he had from when she was spayed and when she had been in another time and needed x-rays, and could see the very beginnings of the disease from an x-ray taken about 21 months ago.  She did well after the first surgery, and spent much of the last 7 weeks using only her 3 good legs so we are hopeful she will do well after the amputation.