Doggie Drama in the Knapp House

If you've known Andy and I for a while, then you know about all of Bailey's broken bones. About 3 years ago, he crushed the bones in his foot and had $2500 worth of surgery to have metal plates put into his foot. After his 3 month recovery, within the next 6 months of that he broke 2 more toes (that we were able to just bandage up and let heal) and ripped 2 toenails out.

So Sunday night when Chelsea just out of nowhere whimpered and stopped walking on her back leg, you can imagine how worried we were. First of all, now we've got a family and a baby to think about too so it's not as easy to just fork over thousands of dollars for a dog, but Chelsea is way too old to handle that kind of surgery anyway. In fact she's got a big mole on her head that the dr said last year we shouldn't remove because she's too old for surgery and it wouldn't be worth the risk.

So I took her in yesterday to the vet, pretty nervous about what he was going to tell me. Good news... no surgery. The vet said it could be a broken foot or it could just be swollen from torn ligaments or tendons. We opted not to get x-rays, but to try anti-inflamatory meds for a week and see what happens. He also said, although it feels broken, he felt like she was putting more weight on it than he would expect for a broken foot. After her 1st dose of meds, she started limping on it. That was an improvement because before that she wouldn't walk on it at all. She's not walking on it this morning either, but her medicine is just once every 24 hours. I feel like after she gets more, she'll do better.

The dr did find a huge lump though on her spleen. He said it's about baseball or softball size. We don't know for sure, but given her age his 1st guess is that it's cancer. He said because she's so old (she'll be 15 in October), even if it was his dog he wouldn't go through with surgery to try to remove it or treatments. She doesn't seem to be in any pain and we don't even know for sure that it's cancerous. He said to just keep an eye on her appetite. If she stops eating or loses weight very quickly then that's a big sign that it's cancer. But for now she's good. We know and have know for a while now that her time is coming to an end. But she could still be here with us for another year or 2... even if it is cancer. All we can do is enjoy her and love on her while she's here.