To catch us all up to date on The Belle Show, I reported an incident that had me all in a twit a little while back here.



So, that episode, without resorting to a visit to the Vet, seems to have resolved itself. Nothing more like it since then.

Fast forward to 2 days ago (that would be Tuesday of this week). There we all were, the happy threesome, clustered in the living room around the TV watching our British shows, as we do every evening, and then possibly the ballgame. Belle was fine. She was snoozing away on the floor between the two of us. Paul was just finishing up his small dish of (homemade) ice cream and went to offer the wee bits of it left in the dish to Belle (she really looks forward to this small offering each night, too. She can't seem to settle down for the night unless she's had her licks.



Well, she was actually snoozing and didn't wake up right away when he offered her the dish. He put it near her face and made a noise with the spoon on the dish, and that woke her right up, kind of startled her a bit, and from what I could see, she kind of lurched around, changing body positions so her belly was on the floor and all four legs were under her. She did not get up to reach the dish. She waited for Paul to stretch down and offer it to her, and she licked it clean in a nano-second... as usual.

Then she just stayed there like that and I just had a gut feeling that when she was awakened just then, something had happened. I still don't know for sure, or if it was all my imagination. But.... when she finally did get up from her lying-down position, she limped seriously and would not even step on her rear right quarters/foot. She hobbled over to the other end of the room and threw herself down into her big puffy bed down there.

I went into panic mode. "Look! She's limping bad! Paul, go check her out!!! Hurry!!!" (I am not a calm presence in an emergency, you could probably tell that...)

He first checked all her feet for pieces of acorns that may have embedded in between her paws (a regular thing around here with so many of them outside in the grass from the two giant oak trees we have over our yard). Nope. No acorns. He felt her legs and, of course, found nothing.

I suggested he get her to go out and pee as it was almost our bedtime (8:45) by then. He got her to get up but she was very reluctant. She was limping again on that rear right leg and quite decidedly.

By this point I'm freaking out. What now?

We decide that the next morning I would call and make an appointment at the vet to get her checked out.

(If I weren't in so much pain at the moment right now, I'd go into more details, but my left leg is screaming in pain down into my knee and down the whole leg so I need to wrap this up.)

I got the appointment for yesterday at 5:20 p.m. with the dog-doc. Off they went only to discover my car was dead in the driveway. Paul must have left the lights on the other night, I don't know. Dead battery. He unloaded Belle and loaded her into his truck and off they went.

When they got home I was waiting on the deck for any answers. Paul can never remember stuff to tell me about medical issues, so he said that the doctor would call us later when she was done with office hours (after 7) and talk to me about whatever she found.

(to be continued, my computer needs to reboot right this second!!!)

OK, I'm back. I was having a windows update. All good now. I hope.

So, where was I?

So true to her word, the dog-doc called and spoke with me and by that point in the evening, I'd had a chance to look over the two medications that she sent home with Paul. I don't exactly remember the name of one (it was Deramaxx and after reading this page about what it did to this lady's dog, I opted out of that one) and the other was Gabapentin. The first one I found lots of articles on and didn't like the side effects and especially didn't like that several people had said it had basically "killed" their own dogs, being on it (see above). Belle was not going to take that one. I think it was an NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory) med. The other, Gabapentin, is used as an anti-seizure medication and pain med... and Dog-Doc said this was very safe. She said she'd heard the things I mentioned about the other one and said it was fine if I didn't want her to have it! More on this drug here.

She is already taking a supplement that has glucosamine and chondroitin for joint health.

To make a long story shorter... I gave her a Gabapentin last night and one this morning. She seems OK but is still limping a little, but I think a little less than she was. It may be a nerve pinched in her spine, Dog-Doc said, or a muscle pull in her rear thigh area. I'm hoping it's just a muscle pull.... I don't like the idea of a pinched nerve on her spine, but I can see that option as viable from how she acts.

Darn. I'm hoping these Gabapentin will alleviate some of the pain. Maybe I should look into getting some for myself!



That's enough. That's where we stand. It's always something... as Gilda used to say.

Cheers,

Bex & Co.

I think I could turn and live with animals...
They are so placid and self-contained,
I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied... not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

~ [Walt Whitman, from "Leaves of Grass, No. 32"] ~

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