Jack is 6 years old. He’s an anybody’s-guess Mutt, with the most commonly thought breeds including Anatolian Shepherd, Boxer, Saint Bernard, and Black Mouth Cur. I’m pretty sure he’s got some pitbull/bullie-breed in him, but don’t tell any of landlords this ever. 😉 I got him at 3-4 months old from a rescue in El Paso called ‘From the Heart Rescue’. He was on petfinder.com, his wonderful little fat-face staring up at the camera, big cast on his front leg, and the horrible name of ‘Ben Wiggles’. I was looking for an older dog but that was love at first sight.
The cast was to come off in our second week together. My vet and I were appalled to see that the leg had healed crookedly; the break had been right above his ‘wrist’ joint, causing the growth plate there to not have sealed properly, allowing the bone to continue growing in one direction. The effect pushed Jack’s paw out. That was the beginning of our problems. My vet re-broke the leg, set it right, and re-cast it. It was another couple of months in a cast and Jack growing rapidly. When we pulled the cast off again, the leg was still crooked. The vet decided to try a brace, but that only lasted for about a week; Jack’s leg by this point had too many sores from the casts/brace. So, we left his leg as it was, and left the sores to heal with the idea we would tackle the leg when the rest of it was better. However, tackling it never happened. Our vet, after seeing Jack doing well on his crooked leg, said that we should just leave it since he seemed to have no problem with it. The alternative was to go into major surgery, involving pins and a metal brace in which the wrist-joint would be fused for Jack’s life and while that might look nicer, it would probably cause him just as many, if not more, problems than the crooked leg itself.
I’ve somewhat regretted letting myself go along with the vet’s plans, though I don’t know what would have been better.
Jack has been pretty good with the crooked leg. We used to be out for hours and hours, working sheep, or hiking, and he would have no problems. In fact, he’s been just fine with the leg until a past summer. July 4th, 2010, actually. We walked downtown to watch fireworks, maybe an hour’s walk from our house, something he would have normally handled no problem. He started limping on the way home and I found out he wasn’t placing his foot down right for some reason, rubbing the skin around his pads raw. From there, it’s just gone downhill.
This past September, 2011, we were referred to the CTVSH facility and met Dr. Bevan, a wonderful individual who I’ve come to realize truly does care about Jack. We went into a costly surgery that I regret so much now, involving a metal ring fixator to ‘grow’ the crooked bone the required 5cm to make it right. Jack’s leg looked alright in it, straight, and eventually as long as the other leg. But we ran into so much bad luck that’s resulted in his tendons being so tight, there is no alternative but to cut them to make the paw flex right. On top of that…Jack’s bones quit closing the gap 2mm from the end. A mere 2mm…and things just finished. So. We’ve removed the fixator ring and have let Jack’s leg along for a bit, to see if the bone would do anything. I regret this too. He doesn’t let on that he has any pain as far as we can tell – he runs with the other dogs and rough-houses like normal. It’s just lost time now.
Thursday this will be done with. He’s going into surgery on Thursday and the leg will be gone for good. And Jack will no longer live in pain. I know, once we’re past the first week, I’ll be much happier, and I know Jack’s life will improve so much. But I’m so scared and worried. Just have to keep telling myself things will be ok.
