Straydog UPDATE posted MONDAY 1/6/03 at ~8:47 p.m. CT

Pat Arnold's Daily Dog Log

MONDAY JANUARY 6 2003

I took Molly, Sunny and Julie to the vet this morning

     Julie was first to see the doctor and the blood test shows that her blood sugar level is okay.

Sunny is next to see the doctor

     Sunny was experiencing pain at the end of her lower back yesterday afternoon so she went to have the doctor see if he could find the problem. Something was definitely wrong, and we could tell she was hurting a lot, as she would whine whenever we petted her rump, which stopped us from petting her lower back very quickly.

Sunny, cooling off in the pool last July.

     The doctor took x-rays which show that she has a slight fracture of one of the disks in the area that is causing her pain. The only explanation for this would be that her big 75-pound kennel companion, and best buddy, Teddy Bear, probably bumped into her too hard during one of their playful nutty chases around their kennel yard. For now we give her pain medication and will keep a close watch on her behavior to see if she begins to feel better over the next several days.

Molly went to see the doctor for the big lump on the inside of her right thigh

Big, white Molly lying in the shade with buddy Max in the heat of the summer

 

Every summer Molly digs a bunker in her kennel to cool off in.

     After the doctor examined the lump Molly has on the inside of her thigh, he said it appears to be a benign tumor, I guess a fatty tumor, is another way to explain it, but he thought it would be best to remove it to make sure it is benign. I left Molly there for surgery to be done about 4 p.m.

     When I called at 5:00 to see how Molly was doing, the vet tech scared the life out of me when she said that Molly was experiencing a lot of bleeding from the drainage tube after the surgery and the doctor was with her right then, and they'd get back to me. (They had put a drainage tube in after the surgery, which is what they always do in cases like this, and the tube will be in for three days, I had been told during our initial visit there with Molly.)

     By 5:30 p.m. I couldn't stand the wait any longer, and I called again to check on Molly, and the vet tech said she had checked with the doctor (who was on the phone long distance right then), and he had told her that the large amount of "drainage" (blood and fluid) Molly had experienced earlier was "fairly normal," the tumor they removed was very big, and that the doctor would call me.

6:45 p.m. and Molly is doing okay

     Dr. Morton just called me and said that Molly is doing okay. The drainage Is more than it should be, he said, but the big tumor he removed was very large, and there were three more tumors that had been hidden behind the big one, and he had removed those too. All are benign, they are fatty tumors, nothing to worry about, he added right away. I asked the doctor if Molly would need to be checked on during the night, and he replied "yes" and that he would be there to see that she is okay, and for me to not worry. He assured me he will be checking on her.

     This is a huge relief! I'll be calling Dr. Morton first thing in the morning to see how she did during the night.