[Dailydrool] Back surgery

[houndsabound at cfl.rr.com]

Julie,
We are going through this with our Joshua.  HE had issues early last week
with his walking and because he had 
Been to our vet before for this, I opted to take him to the specialist.
They did back surgery and full work up.  I was surprised how many different
areas in his back are "compromised' on his spinal cord.
When looking at an MRI of the spinal cord, it should be fairly round.  Josh
had, and still has many areas that are flattened a bit.  
The 2 areas they did surgery on, one was chronic and the other was acute.
The acute one is probably caused the significant immobility he experienced
last week.  
The chronic one,  due to the calcification of the material around the cord,
they could only cut a trough in it to release some of the cord pressure.
Those spots have been there a long time and we will not do further surgery
to try and take care of them,  there must be about 8 more areas they  saw,
but they can only really do 2 at a time due to how long it takes.
Josh is recovering well,  but has developed a UTI from the catheter he had
in for a few days. 
He is on confinement for 4-6 weeks and both of us hate it.  But I am not
going to throw away 7500 on a surgery just because he is unhappy about the
situation.

We are sure hoping Guinness recovers fully and cooperates with his recovery!
We are going to opt in for hydrotherapy and acupuncture once we get the OK
from the vet.

Hugs,  wen, Josh and the Bounders