Well, Otis is spending some quality time with the veterinarian this week.
We saw him last Saturday night but when we left for Church Sunday morning he was no where to be seen. Missing all day Sunday, by Monday morning we expected the worst. Sebastian came in from doing his chores and said Otis wasn’t back. Then 5 or 10 minutes later when he and JennaKay went out the door for school he was laying by the inside gate.
When I checked him out I didn’t feel anything broken and nothing looked swollen. When I started messing with his hip, that was obviously painful. The kids went on to school and we waited for the local vet to open.
Of course, the regular vet was out and someone else was standing in. I should have walked right back out and taken Otis to our other vet in Auburn but I didn’t. She looked him over and did an x-ray. The hip was dislocated but the angle didn’t show how much. She had to sedate him and even that wasn’t working and ended up having to gas him on top of everything else to be able to get a good x-ray. She took one look at that picture and said there isn’t anything I can do for him and suggested we take him to the University. $300.00 and we are now on our way to our Auburn Vet.
We told him we thought Otis had been hit by a car and the other vet said she couldn’t help. He took one look at the x-ray and said this is classic big dog vs car hip dislocation. He immediately had two ideas for treatment. The first was to get the ball joint back into the socket and tie his leg so that it couldn’t pop back out…hopefully. If this didn’t work he would need to remove the ball from the leg bone and create a floating joint.
Well, even with his back leg tied up like a Thanksgiving Turkey the hip popped back out the first day but they got it back in. Just got notified that it’s been 2 days and it looks like everything is going to stay in place. Fingers crossed but it’s good news. Looks like he will be there for a few more days and when he comes home he will be confined to a kennel for a few weeks.
Update: The Vet tried to wrap his leg up pressing the joint back in place. As of Friday it appeared to be holding.
Unfortunately x-rays on Monday showed that it had popped out again. So they unwrapped his hip for now and he is scheduled for surgery on Friday.
