[Dailydrool] Elsinore buggered her back, Part I

[Elizabeth Lindsey]

Two weeks ago today was at the day Ken and I started to feel slightly less anxious about our Elsinore's back. 

When she slowly and painfully got out of bed on Valentine's Day morning, her back end swayed like a drunken sailor and she had trouble placing her hind feet. I immediately did what we call the foot-flip test, where you support a dog by looping your forearm under the dog's middle to support its weight and then you turn a hind foot over so the dog is standing on the top of the foot but without putting full weight on it. If the dog doesn't correct the foot's position at all or takes a while to do so, you could be looking at serious disk problem. Actually, that's a bit of an oxymoron there. All disk problems are serious and require immediate medical attention. If left untreated, they can quickly turn into neurological damage that leaves the dog with some degree of permanent paralysis. 

Elsinore was clearly in pain and whimpered when I tried to help her with the sling I'd made for our late Jane Basset, a veteran of three ruptured disks and two back surgeries to remove said disks. Elsinore managed to get herself outside with me hovering over her the whole way, and I was relieved to see that she still had control of her bladder and bowels. When I got her back inside, she refused breakfast, never a good sign with her, and went back to bed, lying in the down position with her tail stretched out unnaturally straight behind her.

Looking at Elsinore back on her bed, I realized she'd been lying in a similar position most of the night before. Usually she sleeps in her crate, but we'd been letting her sleep on a dog bed in the living room next to our bedroom because she was getting over a UTI, and I wanted to be sure she could come get one of us if she needed to go out in the night. I'd checked in on her a couple of times during the night and noted she hadn't changed positions at all, something I'd thought was a bit odd but hadn't worried too much about. Now, however, I was frightened. 

I immediately called her vet and didn't ask for an appointment but announced that Elsinore appeared to be having a disk problem and we were coming in right now. With herniated or ruptured disks, you have what Jane's vets at Purdue told us is called "the golden hour" (which is actually about 24 hours after the disk injury) to get injectable steroids into the dog to bring down the inflammation around the spinal cord. The more quickly the dog gets the steroids, the better the prognosis. 

Getting Elsinore out to the car and then into it was tricky, and young Charlie didn't make things easier. He'd picked up on my agitation and was convinced something fun and exciting--like a trip to the dog park, maybe?--was going to happen, and he wasn't going to be left behind if he could help it. He didn't seem to be clued in at all to Elsinore's situation. So much for sensitive, caring hounds being attuned to those they love.

I coaxed Elsinore off her bed and out to the car. This time she snarled at me when I tried to use the sling, and it looked as if her pain was located about mid-back. Ordinarily a dog with a possible disk issue shouldn't walk anymore than absolutely necessary, but I decided against trying to carry her to the car, thinking I might make a potentially unstable back situation worse. But she was going to have to get into our SUV somehow, so I reluctantly slipped a muzzle on her so I could safely lift her into the back, where I'd put her bed. She cried, which made me cry.

Young Charlie was still dancing around my feet in happy anticipation, so I decided to take him along as well. If we were going to have to make a decision to let Elsinore go, then it would save everyone a lot of time if Ken or I didn't have to go home to get Charlie first so he could be there for it. Yes, that's where my thinking was going. Elsinore is 12 or 13, or maybe even older than that. She's an alumna of Basset Hound Rescue of Alabama, which took her in as a stray off the street where she wasn't in possession of a birth certificate. But she wasn't a puppy when we got her nine years ago this month. 

Having gone through two back surgeries with our Jane, I know what's involved in terms of post-op care and physical therapy. I know not all dogs recover full neurological function. I know recovery is a long haul for both hound and human. Ken and I decided a while ago it's not something we want to put an old dog through again. 

So my heart was in my mouth as I drove to the vet's. I could have twenty years with our Elsinore and it still wouldn't be nearly long enough. There are so many things she and I haven't done yet, and I want more time to do them all and then some more things as well. This isn't how I want her to go.

(to be continued in another post)

Elizabeth