SURGERY i.postimg.cc/gcQc1xVY/GRADUATE.jpg **
[Original subject line: 2-time surgery survivor - need help preventing jumping ]
Hi everyone! We are almost
10 weeks out from [Apr 2023?] surgery #2 on our beagle/basset mix. Her first surgery, she was not paralyzed, but painful and no meds would help. Two years later, she was paralyzed but maintained deep pain. She is now back to walking, although still a little wobbly. She is getting stronger with physical therapy, etc. She is off all of her meds.
My question is related to keeping her safe in the house when we are out. She doesn't tolerate a crate and does better in a pen, so we put her in her pen when we leave. We have a fabric roof on the pen to discourage jumping. However, she has a problem behavior of
jumping in excitement at the pen's gate when we get home. Naturally, this terrifies me.
This is her second surgery and despite having insurance, both surgeries were an out of pocket expense because we switched companies right before her first surgery, and she had orthopedic pain related to her back on her records...so now all things IVDD related are not covered. So depending on the situation if it were to happen a third time, God forbid, I'm not sure we could afford it but I also wouldn't want to put her through it. She is estimated to be about 9yo, but she's a rescue so we don't actually know for sure.
Things we've tried:
- Sneaking in. She hears the car pull into the driveway.
- We are working on training her to always sit when we come home, but she's a typical stubborn hound and it takes a long, long time to get her reliably trained to do anything.
- Fabric roof - she still tries and just lets the top of her head bounce on the fabric.
- We either walk her or do physical therapy exercises until she's tired, every time before we leave the house.
- We do not ever let her jump or do steps anywhere, so this is currently the only time she might jump - while we are not in the house yet to tell her "no" and "sit", but she knows we're coming.
- We also have a lot of pillows down in front of the pen's door, to at least cushion her if she does jump.
- Discussed daily sedatives with her neuro/regular vet. They say
no {sedatives} currently because she's still doing physical therapy and they can cause ataxia that could hide progress. We just emailed them again to ask again.
=> A note about meds - she has been on trazodone, acepromazine, pregabalin and Benadryl. All of these she developed resistance to, so they no longer had a sedative effect after about a week. Even at the max dose. Gabapentin and valium both caused paradoxical excitement in her. I would be interested in trying other meds or some combination but no doctor has yet been able to tell me of any (I've asked the surgeon and her regular vet, and they just kinda say nothing exists).
What the heck can we do in the meantime to keep her from bouncing in excitement? Other than what we're already trying. Has anyone had this issue and come up with some contraption? I am close to trying to park the vacuum or other feared item in front of the pen door in desperation.
