[Original subject line: Taffy, my Pekingese had surgery]
Hi I’m Jenny,
My girl Taffy had surgery tonight. Just got the call from the dr that it was successful. I will complete the forum intro questions when I have more information to share.
For now, I will share that Taffy is approx
7-8yrs old and is a rescue
Pekingese who joined our family 4 years ago. Taffy doesn’t know she is a dog and finds them all quite undignified and therefore she is totally disinterested in them. She is the first small dog I’ve had after my previous life with mastiffs for 11 years. The year Taffy joined us we fostered another Pekingese hoping he would be a good fit. He wasn’t (too hyper, jumped on Taffy), her disinterest turned to hatred toward him and she was miserable. After two weeks, we resigned ourselves to having Taffy be an only dog. But, then a sweet cocker spaniel mix named Kimo presented himself on Petfinder. He was 15 yrs old when we brought him home 3 years ago. Taffy didn’t hate him and tolerated him very well...it was a match! At 18+ yrs today he’s still going strong. He’s mellow but old, hard of hearing and seeing, clumsy and can bump into Taffy. All that said, it’s possible that some of Taffy's spine trauma happened before we had her and while she’s been with us as careful as we are in general.
Shortly after the foster Pekingese left us in 2017, Taffy had an episode with her back being painful and hunched (2017) but crate rest and meds had her back to “normal” until
about a week ago. I noticed her back hunching but she didn’t seem painful. I thought it was strange but not alarming so I decided to keep an eye on her. Then a couple days later I noticed her front feet took two steps forward while her back feet took 4 steps forward. Finally on Saturday, her rear end had a mind of its own and was acting drunk. We woke up Sunday and she was
dragging her back feet and couldn’t really walk. Still not seeming painful.
That was it, I shouldn’t have waited so I called the vets and all were booked and referring out. I ended up going to a
specialist and spent 2 hours waiting for them to then refer us to another specialist 30 miles away. We went directly and spent another 6 hours before being told to leave her overnight for
MRI
the next day (Monday). They were so busy they couldn’t get to her until today (Tuesday). They assured me that because of her “good mobility and
feeling in her feet” she would be ok to wait since they had other patients with more severe emergencies.
The doctor said her
MRI revealed both acute and chronic issues/lesions on her spine. He said she
may have had a mild spine stroke at some point. He cleaned out the most acute vertebrae and said she will recover 80-90% of her normal mobility after about two months.
He referred me to this forum (which I had already stumbled across in my own research) and I signed up.
Over the next couple of days while she’s in the hospital, I will be preparing the house for her return. We have two steps down to the living room so I will need to create a way to keep the dogs from using that area. I will be exploring this forum for as much information and help as I can find.
Glad to be here and grateful for a forum like this.
More in the coming days.
Jenny
