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Here's Chancy this morning, after our am stroll and breakfast, enjoying her pain meds...

Karen, that's sp sweet! Perhaps sometime next week after Chancy's bowels have had a little time to settle?

Chancy's been in the basement family room with us, catching up on some tv. It's the first time she's done the stairs all week. I don't think we're ready for the stairs up to the bedroom yet (a little steeper, and thinner carpet), but I'm confident that will happen soon.

I may not be home that afternoon, but if I'm not, my hubby will be. If it's hot out, the pups don't lounge outside much. Don't be shy about knocking on the door if you've a moment to visit. Chancy's pretty new harness arrived today! :

Chancy has always been a foot-scuffer the whole two years I've had her (LS). Typically she doesn't bleed from the nails unless I walk her too far over concrete. She usually sticks to walking on the grass alongside the sidewalk. But this time they just cut her nails too short. Are those Soft Claws available in pet stores or just online?

Here's a pic of the incision. It's about two inches long, and on the left side of her neck. The yellow is just staining from the surgical antiseptic... The incision is looking good so far. No swelling, no redness. Chancy's enjoying a rare and precious sunbeam:

Oh I'm so glad he's home for now. So is he, no doubt.

Chancy has all of seven teeth, so she hasn't had any hard crunchy stuff in a looong time. Interestingly, both hubby and I have noticed that the loud "gulping" noise she used to make when swallowing has disappeared. I take that as a good sign. One more positive side-effect from this surgery... I had suspected that Chancy was starting to lose her hearing, but that has improved since yesterday too. I think she just couldn't hear well over her own loud raspy breathing!

We had a peaceful night. The most peaceful in recent memory. I startled awake a few times, only because I couldn't hear her breathing. We did a slow walk around the block this am. Her gait has improved with the easier breathing. She's less wobbly today than she has been for the past few weeks. She has diarrhea, but that's likely due to the anesthesia and the diet changes I've thrown at her the last two days. I expect that to resolve quickly. We had a minor "incident" when we arrived home from our spin around the block. Just as I was about to coax Chancy indoors, I saw blood pooling around her foot. Around the un-bandaged foot. I quickly realized that they had trimmed her nails way too short yesterday, and Chancy's usual scuffing of her feet on the sidewalk had caused two nails to bleed from the quick. Dang, I'd forgotten how much those buggers can bleed! Our patio looks like a murder scene. : I don't have styptic powder on hand, so I tried to use baking flour, mostly just succeeding in creating a bloody gluey mess. After a few minutes, the bleeding stopped and I put a boot on her for an hour or so, just to prevent her messing with it. Now the hounds are all napping in their beds, the cats are hunting flies, and my peaceable kingdom prevails once more.

How frightening! You and Hobbes are in my thoughts...

Oh she's adorable! I hope the water therapy helps her feel better! I wish there was something like that available for my Chancy.

It's horrible to not know... I'm sorry. Can you give them your cell number as primary contact, so you won't miss future calls? I hope Bodie gets to come home soon!

My vet called me back a few hours ago to check on Chancy, and to let me know that he'd spoken to the surgeon about waiting until morning for food. The surgeon said that as long as Chancy was "very alert" and not woozy, I could offer a small amount of food to start with. So I gave her a few smallish meatballs with her evening meds. She didn't hesitate, and swallowed them with no problem. : If those seem to stay down well, I'll give her a few more before bedtime. Have I mentioned how much I like this vet? I've been so disappointed with so many of my vet experiences over the last few years, it's nice to have a positive experience for a change.

The vet isn't a 24-hour place, so she's better off home with me (I'm a feather-light sleeper, especially when I'm concerned about my pets). She is also terribly shy, so staying in a strange place overnight would probably stress her more than necessary. She's still snoozing comfortably. I had to wake her 30 minutes ago to give her a pain med, wrapped in a cold ball of peanut butter. She's still waaaay out of it, so I was thankful that she swallowed it fine. She also had a few laps of water earlier, and no coughing so far.

My gentle stripey tiger-girl is home. : She's very wobbly and woozy from the anesthesia (getting up the five steps to the house was a small adventure), but dang if she isn't breathing ever-so-quietly! In fact it's almost eerie how quiet it is in here right now. I keep checking to make sure she's still breathing. I have several pages of after-care instructions from the surgeon, in addition to the pages of info I grabbed from that Yahoo LP group. I feel reasonably well armed, information-wise (but always appreciate hearing others' experiences). I made a huge batch of Sissy's meatballs for Chancy last night. But my post-op care sheet says to wait until the morning after surgery to feed for the first time. That's a long wait. I'll take pics of the incision later when she's feeling a little perkier. She's snoozing in her bed right now. Thank you everyone, for checking in on us.

I intend to take tomorrow off and spend the whole long weekend with her. I don't know if we'll ever see this again: But at least she can breathe!

The vet just called. He said "Hi Aimee, how are you doing?" I paused and sort of began to stutter something... He said "Wait, let me tell you how you're doing... Chancy's doing great." I thought I was going to fall over with relief. Chancy's awake and breathing easier already. : She's alert and sphynxing in her kennel, but hasn't tried to stand yet. The surgery went well. He said both sides of her larynx were completely paralyzed, allowing only about 15% of normal airflow through. Kind of amazing she was even staying conscious! They tied the left side back, and also removed a small irritating growth on one of her toes (I figured as long as she's under...). He said she came out of the anesthesia even better than some otherwise healthy dogs. They'll give her another hour or so before they try to coax her to stand and walk. So I should be able to go get her in a couple hours. The hardest part is over. Now I just have to worry about post-surgical complications: infection, pneumonia... But she's awake!!!

I just got to work from dropping Chancy at the vet. I wanted to wait while she was there, but it'll likely be several hours, and I might as well try to get some work done. Here's a pic I took with my phone, right before we got out of the car at the vet's office. She was bright-eyed, and had been very excited to go for a surprise car ride. : I hope to offer her many more fun car rides soon...

My sweet Chancy-girl and I are leaving for her surgery in about 40 minutes. She keeps looking at me with her big doe eyes, wondering why I'm not offering her breakfast...

I'm so happy to hear he did well through the surgery. Here's hoping for a speedy recovery.

Oh I'm so sorry to hear this diagnosis. You and Bodie are in my thoughts today. I hope the surgery is a huge success!

Meet with an oncologist. They will be able to tell you your options. I'm sorry to hear the diagnosis, and wish you good luck.

Today we get the pre-surgical blood profile. We just had her blood tested a month ago, but because Chancy's got so many risk factors, it makes sense to do it again... Started out last night being not so great again. Our bedroom is too stuffy for her on humid nights (only one AC vent for the whole floor up there), so by 12:30am I brought her downstairs and we had a girl-slumber-party in the livingroom. She slept right by the AC vent, and seemed fairly comfortable the rest of the night. She had a better walk this morning too. We made it three blocks, better than yesterday's one. Appetite is still good. We're off of the smoothies now, back to her regular diet of softened kibble with various goodies added. She hasn't requested a sandwich in two days now. I'd planned to bring Chancy to work with me today, so we could go straight to our vet appt, but I got a late start. If I'm arriving at work around 7:30, there are too many "scary" people around to comfortably get my shy wobbly Chancy up the six stairs into my building. So instead she'll relax at home, and I'll just leave a little earlier for the appt. Surgery is tomorrow (if today's bloodwork looks good enough), don't know what time yet.

My Tipper has a thing like that in the exact same location. He also has pannus, but that's unrelated, according to my vet ophthalmologist. I don't recall exactly what the specialist called it (not a stye, that's what I thought it was too), but it was most likely a benign cyst-like growth. She said just to keep an eye on it for a couple days. Sure enough, the swelling went down and now it is just a barely noticeable bump on the edge of his eyelid. It did flare up one other time for no apparent reason, but again went back down in a day or two. He's had it for over a year. I'd watch it for a couple days. If it gets worse or doesn't go down, have it looked at. Oops, I type too slow. I see you're already bringing her in. Good luck!

I'm scheduling scoping and probable laryngeal tieback surgery for Chancy this Thursday. I can't stand to watch her struggle to breathe and not do anything about it. This is very risky on several levels, but the fear of her suffocating to death is just too much...