Vet Visit

Monday, I took Reyna to see our regular vet. He put her on Clomicalm. She’s been doing a lot of stress chewing lately, and we’re hoping the Clomicalm will tone her down a bit. She’s on a very low dose right now, and we go back in two weeks for blood work. This particular drug can screw up a dog’s liver (as can the Rimadyl she’s been on for years). If its going to cause any problems, we’ll see indications of that in two weeks. If her blood looks okay, then she’s most likely not going to have trouble with the drug. She gets her blood checked every six months because of the Rimdayl, so it won’t be anything new to us. If her blood work comes back fine, then we’ll start slowly increasing her dose until we reach a behavior level that makes us happy. Which would basically be Reyna, only calmer, but not to the point of stupidity or clumsiness. We had enough trouble with the Phenobarbital causing that a couple of years ago. I’d rather have to constantly tell her to stop chewing than go back to those days.

While the vet was checking Reyna, he asked me about her surgery date. When he heard it wasn’t until May, he asked if there was any way I could pull it forward and do it sooner. Unfortunately, between my work schedule and the surgeon’s schedule, there’s not. When I asked why he wanted it sooner, he said he could feel the deterioration of the bones in both of her hips. He’s worried that she’s already so close to the line that, by May, the surgeon may say there’s nothing left for him to work with. And I believe I’ve mentioned before that there has to be a certain amount of bone in the hips for them to do a successful hip replacement. I also asked which hip he thought they’d do, as her right hip is somewhat dislocated (20 degrees higher than her left), but she’s been favoring her left hip for several months now. He said at this point, it’ll probably be a coin toss. Of course, there’s also the possibility that only one hip will have enough bone, and so there wouldn’t be any choice at all. Part of me appreciates the professional back-up (so to speak), especially as certain people have asked if I could push Reyna’s surgery farther out. Most of me, though, is upset to discover that I wasn’t just worrying for nothing. And pretty much all of me hates that there’s still so much time between now and the pre-op and the surgery. No matter which way things go, I just want to KNOW.