Search the Community

About a months ago I notice our Gré had a limp after dog park. After xrays we found out he has a fracture in his growth plate. Right away our vet suggested surgery, but due to cost as well as recommendation to get a second opinion, we had them apply a splint. Now the vet says to keep it on to the 4 week point because its possible it maybe be healed since he is a puppy and thats when we can do xrays again. After getting a second opinion from a surgeon they agreed to the same plan. Our current consern is what is happening under the wrapping and splint. Our vet noticed two sores at his elbow (from splint being to short and rubbing), and at his back pad. Said it was minor didnt show us any visuals and prescribed antibiotics. Few days later Gré managed to chew off by his elbow and i saw it was not minor and rushed him to a new vet and saw they were pretty bad (attached images) and there is now one on front of leg that seems to get worse with each dressing change. He has the splint for one more week before his new xray to check for healing of fracture. Im concerned that the sores will get worse and have a hard time healing and will have to do a skin surgery the surgeon suggested then stitches. Has anyome experienced this, and found any way to limit irratation, sores, wounds? Anyone know of any vets in nyc knowledgeable of Italian greyhounds? Brokem heart for my grés leg. Going in for a fracture and ending up with sores and raw skin all over his leg that could be worse!! I feel like they need air to heal, but sadly it has to be wrapped for the splint.

So Zuri has a lot of "little" things going on that are making me wonder if there isn't a larger problem. Or perhaps it's just coincidence. Or it could have been something like a food change that upset his immune system and things will resolve. Either way, I just wanted to get some input before meeting with my vet again. So here's the brief rundown: Early May - Zuri had a dental and lump (benign) removal He was slower to recover from anesthesia but otherwise everything was fine, but I noticed him drinking a lot more water and needing to go out more frequently (he was barking to be taken out at odd times). Suspected a UTI, but U/A was clear and urine was concentrated, and vet thought perhaps his bladder was just irritated. Put him on a Vetri-science supplement for bladder health for 10 days and then said we'd recheck. I felt I noticed immediate improvement, but when he went off of it, symptoms came back. I was doing a workshop that required long days away so I kept him on it a bit longer. He's been off of it now for over a week and seems to be doing okay. Around that time, although possibly before, Zuri was shedding a ton. I assumed at first he was just blowing his coat, but it persisted for so long that I suspected something else was going on. It's standard coat blowing stuff, coat looks a bit dull, but mainly tons of little tufts of dead hair that you can pick out, especially around his hind end. Then I noticed a sore on his hind leg that I couldn't explain (no yard for him to have injured himself in unattended). So off to the vet we went. She did a scraping and saw bacteria under the microscope but didn't do a culture or anything, just put him on ABs that he finished yesterday. I saw improvement to his coat on the meds, but the last few days it seems like it's been getting worse again. Also noticed he was sensitive about his left ear. Vet looked and said there's a big waxy ball o' gunk down in there. Prescribed daily ear washes for a week to get it out, which I've been doing, but I haven't seen anything come out and he's still occasionally sensitive about it. He also has a new wound on the front of his other back leg. We were at Grapehounds this wkd so it's possible he got the scrape there, but I only noticed it (and his obsessive licking) when we go home on Monday and never noticed an incident where he would have gotten it. The appearance of it does seem to coincide with the reappearance of the hair loss, which I would easily attribute to him finishing his ABs except that it started a couple of days before the end of the course. That about sums it up. The only other things I think that are worth mentioning are that he was on a different AB immediately after his dental because he had extractions and for the same reason, I had to feed him premade raw, which had ingredients he's not used to (although only vegetables) for about 2 weeks. I mention those only because I wonder if either could have upset his system and led to these issues. So having said all of that, my vet mentioned that she wanted to check Zuri's thyroid if the ABs didn't resolve the skin issues. I'm not opposed to doing that, although he doesn't have other symptoms like lethargy, weight gain, etc. and the hair loss isn't exactly what I'd expect from a low thyroid. If we do do it, I'll just spring for the full MSU panel right off of the bat, so I guess I'm wondering whether to just do that, whether we should do another skin scraping and get a culture this time, or whether there are other things we should look at, and in what order. He obviously had b/w shortly before his dental and that all looked good. FWIW, he's had his thyroid checked in the past and it's been good, but that was years ago and I know dogs can develop hypothyroidism in old age. Any thoughts? We're at the vet's fairly often for acupuncture and cold laser for Zuri's LS so it's no biggie to do tests one at a time rather than all at once to avoid multiple visits. So we could for instance, do another skin scraping/culture first, then if those are negative, do the thyroid panel. I guess I'm just trying to mainly get to the root of this, but also avoid spending money on unnecessary tests if possible. Thanks!