1st September
Lucy was a bit gimpy last night, but this morning I came down to find her limping quite badly. I gave her some paracetamol and another pain killer she is allowed, but by mid morning there was no improvement. She was still not only panting but following me around and just wanting to be close.
As a Lab owner, I am used to both dogs getting up and joining me in the kitchen, probably the room they love best. It’s where they get fed but also where things often fall on the floor and need hoovering up; they do so love to help! But today she was different, so I ended taking her to the vet.
It wasn’t the nicest of conversations but the vet was lovely and I didn’t get any fake sympathy. She has one more drug that they can prescribe her: the addition of gabapentin as a way of controlling her pain, and then we are out of options and she has to be PTS.
They ended up giving her an injection of a mild opiate to help in the short term and although they did warn me that she might be sleepy, they didn’t mention the rarer side effects, which of course, being our pup, she developed, about 40 minutes before the surgery was due to close on a Friday night!
Her panting worsened about 5 hours after the injection and she was whining every time she breathed out; I really thought she was dying. It was horrible…
As it turns out dogs can get anxiety and palpitations from opioids and as soon as I realised this, I grabbed a sachet of nutraceutical to give her and within 20 minutes it was beginning to work. She was lying down by herself and the whining had stopped completely.
By the next day she was back to her normal happy self and the limping had almost gone.
Panic over.
