okslater

Another update on Lemming. She's doing really well. It's two weeks since her surgery. I can't see any evidence of facial paralysis. She's getting out for short walks and is a bit uncoordinated but strong. But best of all, she seems happy. She's very enthusiastic about mealtimes, and starts chattering her teeth in anticipation. Her face looks normal - the look of pain haunting her has passed, and she has been windmilling her tail in enthusiasm for her short walks. It's so good to have our little hound back, even if it's not for long. We are going to book a cottage by the sea in September. She used to be terrified of the waves but now she loves paddling.

Hopefully! We're just hoping this will have helped with the nerve pain. That was our main goal. Thank you for the harness recommendations, they look good. My boyfriend has bought a sling but I think those harnesses look much easier to use so will get one of those as well.

Great news!

Hope everything goes well today.

An update on Lemming. She had a CT scan of her abdomen and other than the nerve sheath tumour it all looked clear. They operated on Wednesday and removed everything they could see. It was a gruelling 4 hour op, but she was stable. She's now recovering. She can walk but is very unsteady and uncoordinated. I presume that will improve over the coming weeks? We live in a three story house with steps into and out of both doors of the property, so not ideal. We are looking at getting ramps for the steps and making up a bed downstairs. She also has a one sided facial paralysis that is confusing our vets, and it's on the wrong side that they were operating, and also they were nowhere near any facial nerves in their manipulations. There was no evidence of other tumours on the scan and her ears were fine. It might be a permanent feature - she can't blink her eye. Anyone have any experience of living with this condition? It is the dog equivalent of Bell's palsy, it seems.

I had this with my hound. She is incredibly anxious and the slightest thing would spook her, and she'd remember it next time and point blank refuse to cooperate. We got by by only walking her if she requested it herself. Then we knew she was in a compliant mood. Then after a while we adopted a big, stupid, easy going oaf of a hound who absolutely loved walks, and that excited her enough to want to join in. Then she turned into the bravest mut on the walks and would bark at everyone whilst wagging her tail, with her big bodyguard in tow.

@macoduck That's good to hear. Lemming's tumour is incredibly painful so far, it's really hurting her, but we're hoping the surgery will give some relief and maybe when it grows back it wont be right into the nerve like the current one.

Thank you everyone. I just wasn't expecting it. We both feel so awful, and don't know how we can live without her in our lives. We love her so much! I'm hoping this is just early stage grief and we can move on so we aren't stressing her out with our emotions.

Thanks. The surgeon just called. She said it's a nerve sheath tumour. They are going to do a CT scan but think it's a primary and hasn't spread, so will resect as much of it as possible and then possibly some radiography depending on the histology report. Fingers crossed it's not too aggressive and doesn't grow back quickly, and it buys us some more months at least.

Thanks you Time4ANap. I'm trying to pull myself together as me sobbing all the time is not good for her! She's always been very sensitive to emotions. I really need to pull myself together and plan some nice times for her while she's still up for it.

This has turned out to be vertebral cancer. We're waiting to see if there are any treatment options. We are absolutely devastated.

Oh yeah we're absolutely not going to bail on the tests, we're counting down the hours! We can't live like this. It's heart-breaking seeing her in so much pain. I will definitely explore alternative therapies if there's no obvious cause but my guess at the moment is a ruptured disc or something as she collided with our glass back door about 3 months ago. Hopefully the prednisone works and I will be watching for further updates.

Hi RemusinCA, I have no advice but this sounds exactly the same thing that is going on with one of my greyhounds, Lemming. We have been waiting for an MRI and neurology appointment for a month now, it's booked in for 7th July. She is on gabapentin but I'm not sure it's doing much. We are also struggling due to broken sleep and 24/7 monitoring of her to stop her shaking her head and erupting in screams of pain (whilst also both trying to work from home full time). We can get her out for two very short walks a day but more than that and it sets her off. I will report back on her neurological tests and mri results. How old is Remus? Lemming is 7, and never raced, and has always been really fit and agile. The only difference with your hounds symptoms to mine, is Lemming still has a massive appetite and she still manages to get down two flights of stairs in about 5 seconds if she hears the fridge door open. Which can't be doing her much good, so we've put the baby gates back up.

Thanks everyone. Yeah my vet sent a detailed email to the hospital explaining why he thought she really needed to be seen soon, but to no avail. He is now on holiday for two weeks. I will ask him about additional drugs when he gets back.

Two months, I've just been told, before we can get a neurology appointment. My poor dog!

Thanks, yeah, that's what we'll do I think. Poor mutt. She doesn't like being left behind when I walk our other grey. But he is a crazy one and will just be a pest if he doesn't get enough exercise.

Still waiting for an appointment with neurology. There is a big backlog in the UK especially for neurology, I've been told. We were bounced from a couple of hospitals straight away as the wait is too long. Hopefully she will get seen next week. Meanwhile, she has adjusted to the gabapentin and it seems to be helping. She is not crying out nearly as often. We haven't been told whether to restrict her movements or not. I'm not sure what to do.

Yes unfortunately when she was in with this the last time I wasn't there, as the only appointment we could get was when I was unavailable. My partner took her in (it's his dog too), but I'm the one who makes these kind of decisions for her so he was waiting for my input. She will definitely need sedating as even though she's zonked, she's flickering and panting and shifting around. The vet she's with now is very good, we have four pets and I've been with that surgery for over ten years, but yeah I will ask him about codeine sulfate as the gabapentin doesn't seem to be hitting the head pain. Thank you!

Thanks FiveRoooooers, good suggestion. However I just called our vet and even that will take over a week, as they are so busy. Covid has really screwed things up for us here. I have asked them to book us in for that anyway, and will keep trying for the MRI in the meantime. She's on 300mg three times a day of Gabapentin. She's quite small - only 26 kg. She seems a bit more alert on it today, and is doing a lot more scratching and rubbing of her left ear.

Hello, we are having a difficult time getting a diagnosis for my 7 year old dog, Lemming's, issue. She started flapping and scratching at her ears a lot two months ago. Took her to the vet - they prescribed ear drops. They couldn't look in her ears as she wouldn't let them. Two weeks later, she's still doing it, so back in again. Diagnosed dental pain. She had 15 teeth out. Post surgery, she was still flapping her ears and now we noticed she was tilting her head a lot, and crying out in extreme pain. Assumed it was still dental pain as she recovered from the surgery, kept giving her painkillers, but then when it wasn't resolved after a week, we called the vets again. We got a more experienced vet who said it sounded like a neck issue. He was able to replicate the issue by pressing on her neck (I'm not sure where - we're not allowed into the surgeries here due to covid so everything is conveyed remotely). He gave us gabapentin as well as anti-inflammatories, and referred us for an urgent MRI (which we still haven't had, as it seems everyone in the UK has bought a pup and all the vets/hospitals are overwhelmed). She has a left ear that is continuously twitching. No other neurological signs that I can see. The gabapentin has knocked her out, but she still cries when she twists her head. She can walk normally except for the head lean. She is going up and down the stairs as nimbly as ever, was still up for walks (until we knocked her out with the gaba), her appetite is good, although she's more lethargic than usual due to the pain. No nystagmus or any sign of vertigo. When she had her teeth removed, they thoroughly checked her ears and couldn't see anything. She's not stumbling or having difficult coordinating movement. She ran into our glass back door 2-3 months ago. Perhaps she crushed a disc? Or could this be a tumour pressing on her spine? She is usually incredibly nimble for a greyhound. She is much more supple and coordinated than our other, 3 year old boy grey. It's looking like it will be at least until next week before we get an MRI. I'm worried sick about her. I've had her since she was 18 months old, she's a failed racer as she was too anxious. She is my sweet, little girl. Has anyone ever experienced similar issues?

I can only speak for my hound, but she definitely prefers summer (except for snow, she'll make an exception for that). I would also say 2.5 months isn't that long in greyhound settling down terms. Looking back, I think ours was with us at least a year before her true colours came out. She didn't really say much up until then, and we just thought she was a silent greyhound. However now she barks at the door (handy as we have no door bell), chirrups when she wants food, sighs and snuffles when she's fed up or isn't getting enough attention, and does the occasional mad howl when she's hyper. One thing she is not is silent anymore! Nice to hear that racindog. Don't think we could foster cleptogrey, as we work full time and have two cats. If we were adopting then between us we could manage to work from home for a month, but we wouldn't be able to do that regularly.

Hi 3greytjoys, thanks for the response. She definitely does seem to enjoy just being in the same room as other people/animals. It's rare she'll go off onto a room on her own unless there are no comfy spots left. What price is happiness? We could afford another one, and my boyfriend would be persuaded if she was more chilled out with company. She comes everywhere with us outside of work, so gets plenty of attention, and we try to holiday in the UK so she can come too. Our biggest worry would be our older cat as it's taken a couple of years of careful integration and baby gates before we got to the stage where they were all happy milling about in the same room together unsupervised. She has a reasonable prey drive but is very food motivated so we had to work at it for a while. Maybe it will be easier the second time around.

Hi HeyRunDog, I'm in the NW UK so we'll be having similar weather. Every winter she is like this (and so are my cats), so I'm assuming they are just sensible! When I say 'walk' to hear she always looks out the window first! She has regular vet checkups and seems perfectly healthy so I just go with it.

My grey is like this. She's five years old and we've had her three and a half years. The only thing that's changed since we first got her is that she now wont eat green things! Still pretends she's not had her breakfast/dinner to me and my boyfriend when we're not both there at feeding time, and tries to get fed twice. She is glued to me when I'm cooking in the kitchen, staring at the floor and generally getting in the way, hoping I drop something. I put a sofa in the kitchen just so I could banish her to it while I was cooking, now she sits there balefully waiting to be given permission to lick the floor. Her weight has been completely steady despite her very healthy appetite, so I don't worry about it. The advantage is she has been pretty easy to train. She knows if she doesn't harass our cats she will get to lick their bowls afterwards. She does all the tricks you could get a proper dog to do - sit, paw, down, up, fetch the ball, etc. And her recall is pretty good too. I'd be more than happy to get another food motivated dog! We've learnt not to leave any food based presents wrapped under the christmas tree, and to keep everything out of reach when she's home alone. She's pretty good at not eating any food on our table although I left my breakfast sardines on toast for a few seconds too long recently and she couldn't resist those. To be fair, sardines are usually her food, not mine, so I understand her confusion

Hi, you might find it gets easier in warm weather. My grey is a nightmare for statuing in winter, especially if there is traffic. However, her enjoyment of being outside seems to override her fear somewhat when the weather is nice and she's much less likely to freeze up. We despair of her inactivity over winter and feel like she'll never go on walks again, then come spring she's bouncing around our sitting room demanding to be walked. We find she's much better when walked with another dog. Do you have anyone with a dog who could accompany you?