Tucker

Thursday morning when I got back from working in Jayde's class at school I noticed Tucker sitting in the stroller in front of the house and didn't really think much of it since he likes to do that from time to time. So I went on in to the house and went about my business. A couple hours later Doug came home from lunch and Tucker was still sitting out in the stroller and again we didn't think much about it. However, when Doug left around 15-20 minutes later Tucker was at the door waiting to be let in. Only thing was, it was really taking him a while to come inside. He was having a hard time walking on his back legs, though he was still able to make it all the way down the stairs before Doug and I caught up with him. We knew something was going on...but just weren't sure as to the what. I felt him all over to see if I could feel anything out of the ordinary but couldn't. So we decided to just leave him alone a bit and see if he just bruised or pulled something. That night he was still not putting much weight on it his back legs, so we talked about taking him in Friday morning (the only question was when to do it...since if you read my previous post you will see it was jammed packed with things to do). After he had came in from outside we had put him in our room on our bed to try to help make him comfortable. That evening when we headed for bed we noticed that he had gotten down and was lying on the bath mat in our bathroom so we thought that maybe it wasn't as bad as we thought since he was moving around.

The next morning we found him all the way downstairs in Doogie's old bedroom lying on the chair in there. So once again we figured since he obviously made it all the way downstairs and onto a chair it couldn't be that bad...right? I wasn't able to really check on him until later that afternoon and he was sleeping downstairs next to the couch. And since I was busy with the kids I thought I would just leave him alone. Later that day my mother and father-in-law stopped by and she wanted to take a look at Tucker. So I went downstairs to find him and when I picked him up he cried and I could tell he was in a lot of pain. So we decided to go ahead and take him to the vet. They ended up doing x-rays and it showed that he had broken both of his back legs right where the ball goes into the socket. She said that she normally doesn't see both of the legs broken at one time like this, usually it is just one of the legs. So we were trying to figure out how this could of happened... she didn't think he had gotten hit by a car though. So our only other ideas were that a garage door got closed on him (since it had to have hit him dead on top of his back legs) or something really heavy fell down on top of him. I also noticed that his claws on his front feet were torn and ripped off, so he must of been really trying to pull himself out from under something. His broken legs weren't an easy fix...they can't just throw a cast on him and call it good. The first option was surgery which would run anywhere from $800-$1000 per leg! Yeah....unfortunately we just don't have that kind of extra money lying around. Then our vet also told us another alternative...she told us that they can heal on their own, but it would just be a longer process and he would be more apt to develop arthritis earlier on and have a more severe case of it. But, on the bright side he would more than likely be able to start walking without a limp in a few months and we wouldn't have to spend a ton of money doing it (just for his pain meds). Our biggest worry is that we didn't want him to live in pain, but she reassured us that obviously the broken bones will be painful for a while, but it won't be like he will be in pain for the rest of his life even after his bones heal. So that meant we could rule out having to put him down (which I was very thankful for!) And on another note about the surgery, she informed us that if we decided to do surgery at a later date (even years later) that would still be an option.

So the poor guy is now in seclusion (I have him locked up in my craft room downstairs) and he seems to be doing pretty good so far. I make sure he gets his pain meds so that he isn't in much pain. He's been eating and drinking for me and he even manages to pull himself over to the litter box and uses it. I think he is bored though being locked in a room all by himself because he gets really excited when one of us goes in there to check on him (and I try to check on him frequently and make sure he is eating and drinking and what not). He will even try to pull himself over to where you are if you are doing something else and not paying attention to him. It is pretty sad and pathetic to see him pull himself along on his front legs just to come over and see you. So if all goes according to plan, in two weeks or so he should hopefully be trying to put some weight on his back legs and moving around and then by 6-8 weeks he should be up and about walking with pretty much no limp. If he isn't up and about a little by two weeks she wants to see him back (she also wanted to know if he wasn't using the litter box over the weekend, but since he is that is one less thing we have to worry about).