Nikki the Rottweiler

Here’s a tip that might help some people as they go through this process with their new TriPawd…

If you read some of the earlier status reports that I’ve put up, you’ll note that I mention that Nikki is restless a lot. For the first couple of days post surgery, the restlessness was attributed to the dysphoria brought on by the high doses of pain medication, and that certainly seems to have been the case, as when we started reducing the pain meds, the restlessness seemed to dissipate. However over the last few days Nikki had become increasingly restless, and you could tell that it was related to the wound itself.. We had applied the anti-itch cream which definitely helped, but it didn’t really remove it altogether.

As yesterday wore on, Nikki seemed to get more and more restless and irritated with her stitch area.. Mary and I discussed it, and remembered something that the Banfield Emergency vet had said (I’m sorry that I don’t remember her name); “Put some triple-antibiotic on the area”. The idea here is to help address the possible infection that could get in because of the drainage of the seroma. Well, Mary went to the store last night and bought some Neosporin with pain relief, and literally the moment that she applied that to the wound, Nikki’s restlessness and irritation with the wound went away. She applied it a couple of times through the night, but it is very obvious that it works..

Today Nikki has been perfectly fine. She’s moving around a bit better than she was yesterday, but more importantly her urge to scoot along the carpet and pick at her wound is gone! She’s very happy, and very peaceful today. (As I write this, she’s laying down at my feet here in the office, after having come in from sunning herself on the back deck)

So, tip of the day, apply Neosporin (or some other triple antibiotic with pain relief) to the stitches area starting around day 5 after surgery. You’ll likely find that it keeps your new tripawd from going nuts as the stitches heal!

Here’s a photo of Nikki sunning herself on the deck:

And I would be remiss if I didn’t share this photo without so much zoom so you can see the rest of the story….

This entry was posted on January 31, 2010 at 14:14 and is filed under News, Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.