My dog has an old gunshot injury

I talk about so much good stuff when it comes to my Wrigley but today I’m going to talk about the bad stuff.  One of my first posts was about discovering that my dog has an old gunshot injury.  Wrigley is full of energy; she loves to walk, run and play like any other dog, but as the cold weather has rolled in we’ve started to see evidence of pain in this old injury.  It started when the temperature on our morning walks dropped to below freezing.  I noticed she limped a little bit when we started out but eventually it would go away as we continued walking.  Then there was yesterday.

The morning walk is always her longest.  I shoot for anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes…sometimes we go for an hour and a half on the weekends.  It wasn’t particularly cold yesterday morning, I think with the windchill it was hovering around 20 degrees.  As our wonderful vet, Dr. Hotaling, told us, dogs are stoic…they’re not always going to show that they’re in pain.  Yesterday, Wrigley told me she was in pain.  We were walking at SUNYA where, like in the State Offices, they use WAY more salt than is necessary.  When we first set out I didn’t think there would be much salt since, ya know, there hasn’t really been any snow or ice, but apparently the dusting of snow we got the other morning was enough to cause them to dump two tons of salt on every surface in the area.  I’ve been wanting to get Wrigley a pair of humiliating boots to wear for protection (sure they’re cute on a Pomeranian, but it seems unfair to subject a German Shepherd to them) but with the lack of old man winter showing up I haven’t exactly raced out to buy them.  I was warned that salt irritates their paws but I didn’t realize how bad it could be.  My best guess is that our problem was her already tender paw plus the irritation of the salt creating a combination for some major pain.

After she had done her business she sat down, lifted her bad paw and wouldn’t move.  I got down and wiped it off as best as I could and we set off again.   After a few feet she stopped again and lifted her paw, this time trying to lick it.  At this point we had been walking exclusively in grass because I knew she had to be hurting.  We struggled to get very far.  We hit Western and started heading home, stopping every few feet for her to rest.  She was barely able to walk by the time we got to University Plaza so we just stopped.  She laid down with her head in my lap and I massaged her paws.  We sat for about fifteen minutes before giving it another shot.  The rest must have helped because we made it the home without too much limping.

I felt so helpless with her lying there, I really struggled not to cry.  If she can’t walk, what am I supposed to do with an 80 pound dog when I’m a fair distance from home?  She’s probably not even 3 years old and if she’s already having these kinds of problems it’s going to go downhill fast.  I’ve had her on joint supplements since we got her but it’s apparently not enough.  Next, we’ll finally get her those Muttlucks, keep the walks a little closer to home and just love the snot out of her.

Sad Face PS, it’s nice if you clear a path for pedestrians in the winter. But if you have to use a de-icer, try something like Safe Paw or other pet safe product since dogs and their owners are probably some of your most frequent winter pedestrians.  Thank you. visit pet dog planet