Nikki the Rottweiler

Last week at this time Mary and I were sitting with Nikki in Dr. Pyne’s office and had just finished a discussion asking the question, “Are we doing the right thing”. The question was of course related to the fact that Nikki seemed to be having more bad days than good since the surgery, and basically we were wondering if we were doing all of this for us as opposed to her.

We had already determined that Nikki had some sort of infection, and Antibiotics weren’t working very well (High fever, obvious pain and discomfort) so we weren’t sure what to do.

Dr. Pyne convinced us to let her treat the infection more aggressively, and by Wednesday of last week Nikki was showing signs of improvement, so Mary and I took a trip to Tucson, leaving the dogs in the care of our Son, with very specific instructions on what to do and how to care for them….

Well, all of the reports that we got while we were out of town was that Nikki was doing fine. When we arrived home last night, the proof was in the fact that this 3 legged 90 pound dog decided that she needed to tackle us when we came in the door. She was definitely the old Nikki, and that fact was proven to me once again today when I walked in after work and Nikki basically demanded that I get down on the floor and play with her. I have not seen her this happy and playful since well before the surgery!

Dr. Pyne had sent out a sample of the infected area (basically the lymph nodes near the surgery site were swollen badly) to the lab to try and culture some bacteria so she could determine exactly what she was fighting, but had prescribed a very high dose of Cipro antibiotics. (Tip for the unaware: If you ever need to obtain Cipro or other high-dose antibiotics, have your vet write a prescription and take that to YOUR pharmacist. What would have cost us almost $200 through the vet cost us less than $25 through our Safeway pharmacist, and no funny-business either. The script was clearly labeled for canine use) The results came back as Streptococcus, which is a very nasty bug, that just happens to respond well to high doses of Cipro…

One of Nikki’s pre-surgery habits was what we call the “Chicken Scratch”. After doing her business on the lawn she’d take a few steps forward and then cover the area by scratching up some grass. Obviously this is a bit harder when you only have 1 rear leg, but I do believe she’s gotten it figured out now, as you can see right at the start of this video (The video itself is rather boring, but I cannot even begin to describe how happy this makes me to be able to watch at this point)

In other news, Mary and I had the opportunity to meet some of our fellow Tripawd parents (Including the famous Wyatt and his parents!) at the get together in Phoenix on Saturday. Thank you all for making us feel welcome, and we really do hope to get together with anyone here in Colorado!

This entry was posted on April 5, 2010 at 17:52 and is filed under News, Recovery, 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.