[Dailydrool] Back surgery

[Pam McQuade]

A couple of years ago, our Abner had surgery on his back for intervertebral 
disc disease (a slipped disc). I learned a lot about the subject, though I 
am no vet.

1. This is a very painful surgery. I would not enter into it lightly. If a 
dog was elderly, I don't know that I would go this route at all. Sometimes 
it turns out that what you're dealing with is cancer, not really a back 
problem. And you somehow will need to judge if your hound will do well with 
the pain.

2. It is expensive to have the surgery done. Abner's surgery cost about 
$5,000. But he was young, about six years old, and I felt he deserved a 
chance. The problem came when he ended up being aggressive following the 
surgery. Abner is a very sensitive guy who does not deal well with pain (as 
we discovered following the surgery), and we ended up having to put him in 
the surgeon's rehab area for a while. I'm not sure just how much this 
helped, but it was another cha-ching event.

3. You must be ready to give intensive care following the surgery. Someone 
will have to be with the dog on a consistent basis. The dog has to have 
crate rest for a few weeks. You will have to use a sling to take the dog out 
to potty.  Invest in a commercially made one, unless you have very strong 
arms. Though you can use a towel, that takes a good deal of strength. A 
reguar towel is too bulky; it helps if you split it in half, the long way, 
but it still is not easy to grip. One dark night I inadvertantly dropped 
Abner down a couple of steps shortly after he came home; I will always feel 
awful about that. Fortunately, he did not seem to be hurt, just a bit 
traumatized.

4. If you don't have a ramp into your house, you will have to put one up. 
Ours took a lot of space, because it has to be at a fairly gentle slope. If 
you only have a step or two, you might be able to buy a pet ramp and do fine 
with that, though since it does not have any sidebars, you will have to be 
careful. But more steps will probably take a carpenter's efforts (good news 
if you have carpentry skills, but we didn't). The sooner you get this set 
up, the better.

5. After the surgery, you dog will not be able to do steps for the rest of 
its life. Anything that creates torsion on the back is forbidden. A while 
ago, when I took Abner into our vet's, they took him in the back to work on 
him, and he rolled over on his back, paws in the air (he's not aggressive 
with them, just me). He's not really supposed to do that kind of roll, but 
how does one stop him? He also has to wear a harness, no collar. When I pull 
on him, he sometimes does a roll--another forbidden thing. (Harnesses are 
not a good way to control a basset, and they do not generally fit bassets 
well).

When they did the surgery, they told us that Abs actually had two slipped 
discs--one worse than the other. Because they were not close together, they 
could only do surgery on the worse one. IVDD can be recurring, though one 
Web site I looked at told me this was rare. I'm not sure how much of Abner's 
testiness comes from the disc they did not work on. In addition, my vet told 
me that ALL dogs get arthritis after the surgery. Abs certainly seems to be 
more sensitive when the weather is bad.

Many days I wonder if I did the right thing, putting him through surgery. 
His life has not been easy. But on the days when he feels good and is 
galloping about the house, I know I couldn't have denied him the pleasure. 
I wish he could talk and tell us what the problem is. My vets seem to think 
his aggression is behavioral. We've had a behaviorist in, and Abner seemed 
to improve. Because I stopped the training when he seemed to have gotten it, 
he relapsed. Issues in my life interfered with my doing the training again, 
and I just haven't gotten things back on track. It's time for me to call the 
behaviorist again.

Back surgery is a difficult decision. I wouldn't do it again for Abner, but 
I might look into physical therapyor other alternatives. I know there was 
one out there, but I seem to have lost the Web link.
Pam, food slave to the Dashing Bassets