Little Black Dog update
Otis survived his neutering, and I'm sure he can walk much easier now that his enormous testicles are gone - it must be a small dog thing - my friend and I have a theory that dog testicles come in one size, no matter the size of the dog. They took another x-ray while he was 'under', and his spine is healing nicely, and whatever was going on with his tummy seems to have resolved itself. All in all, he looked well enough to start heartworm treatment.
Heartworm treatment is a pretty severe thing - basically, a compound that includes arsenic is injected into the animal two days in a row, and this will kill the heartworms. Of course, then you have a big bunch of dead heartworms that will slowly decay / be absorbed / filter out of the body. This process takes a couple of weeks, and during that time it is really important to keep the animal QUIET. Calm and quiet. If they're not quiet, and they get their heart really pumping, chunks of dead heartworms can break off and obviously you don't want chunks of anything washing along your veins.
Otis does not do quiet. He is on, or he is off. There's really nothing in between. Being a small dog, he tends to pelt around the house like he's in a pinball machine at the best of times. It's really cute listening to his little paws click-clacking on the wooden floors at a million miles an hour. He takes little, bitty steps, and many of them. We tried keeping him in his crate, where he spends the daytime hours when we're out quite happily. He did not like being in his crate when we were home - in fact, he got so frantic, we figured he was probably doing more damage in than out. So we leave him out when we're home, and we try and make sure he doesn't run around the back yard like a crazy thing too much, and so far he's made it to one week post heartworm treatment and hasn't keeled over.
It's a miracle.
Heartworm treatment is a pretty severe thing - basically, a compound that includes arsenic is injected into the animal two days in a row, and this will kill the heartworms. Of course, then you have a big bunch of dead heartworms that will slowly decay / be absorbed / filter out of the body. This process takes a couple of weeks, and during that time it is really important to keep the animal QUIET. Calm and quiet. If they're not quiet, and they get their heart really pumping, chunks of dead heartworms can break off and obviously you don't want chunks of anything washing along your veins.
Otis does not do quiet. He is on, or he is off. There's really nothing in between. Being a small dog, he tends to pelt around the house like he's in a pinball machine at the best of times. It's really cute listening to his little paws click-clacking on the wooden floors at a million miles an hour. He takes little, bitty steps, and many of them. We tried keeping him in his crate, where he spends the daytime hours when we're out quite happily. He did not like being in his crate when we were home - in fact, he got so frantic, we figured he was probably doing more damage in than out. So we leave him out when we're home, and we try and make sure he doesn't run around the back yard like a crazy thing too much, and so far he's made it to one week post heartworm treatment and hasn't keeled over.
It's a miracle.