I haven't posted here in a while, life had just gotten so hectic for me. Poor Finn underwent further diagnostics and was diagnosed with ED, both elbows. Had the surgery. We are now about 3.5 weeks out from surgery. I started with a lot of crate rest, but unfortunately something (either the surgery, anesthesia, or medications) triggered a HUGE surge of Finn's "fly-biting" behavior and it was so bad I had to take him to the emergency vet for an overnight!!! It was SO SO upsetting. He was running around constantly biting and acting like he was seeing ghosts, and I couldn't distract him from the episodes. Absolutely unbearable. Anyway, due to the fly biting I have NOT wanted to add to his stress by crating him if I can possibly manage it, and keeping his life as normal as possible with the exercise restraints. Amazingly, Finn (1 year old!) has calmed down tremendously, and tends to just lay around and sleep these days unless I'm actively engaging him. Occasionally he wanders around and wanders to me for pets. There have been a couple times where he got too excited and ran around/jumped at guests, but really not too many. I saw he was slipping on the hardwood and got carpet runners and I'm going to get more. Due to his additional wandering around the house I haven't increased his walks as fast as the vet told me to. I'm giving him about 2, 5-10 minute walks a day (he should be at 10-15 minute by now). I even cut back walks completely some days. MY CONCERNS He still limps quite a bit if he gets up from lying down. He is just very stiff, mostly the right leg. I can see he is still favoring that right leg, although his last couple of walks his gait has looked very good until the end of the walk. I got the dang FLU last week and had to let him use the short flights of stairs a few times because I just couldn't carry him with a fever and muscle aches. It killed me but I couldn't afford to throw my back out (he's 55 lbs, amazing I can pick him up at all). I'm worried that this and the additional wandering he gets due to not being crated are going to hurt him. I'm afraid I've already ruined his outcome! However the vet didn't say strict crate, they said I could keep him out if he's quiet. And he really is quiet 98% of the time. I've been reading old ED threads here and on other forums and it says dogs recover differently and setbacks and bumps are common with recovery. Obviously I'm going to call the surgeon tomorrow but sometimes he's hard to get hold of. Just looking for other people's experiences. This fly biting stuff has thrown a wrench in things and I'm worried too much crate will negatively affect him mentally as one theory is that the stress and inactivity is exacerbating it. [Side story: Amazingly due to the California laws, I was able to obtain a 150% refund of his purchase price to help with the vet bills. Also amazingly I had Healthy Paws insurance which covered 80% of all of this. With the breeder help, however, this ENORMOUS financial burden has been almost totally eased. I wouldn't have been able to do it at all without the health insurance, and the breeder refund means I won't be going into debt.]
Love the photo with the cake! How cute. It sounds to me like you're making very sensible decisions based on careful consideration of his physical and mental health. And your own health is important too - if you stuff your back you'll be doing no-one any favours. So, I think you're doing a great job in what is a complex situation. I'll be interested to know if the surgeon advises you to do more on the exercise front - maybe you have been holding back more than you needed to. I'm sure that you have not ruined his outcome - don't worry about that.
I read a link somewhere to 'fly biting' but unfortunately I can't find it. It was thought that 'fly biting' could be due to pain, though I seem to remember it was pain in the abdomen.
Yes, unfortunately with fly biting there is no single agreed-upon cause. There are literally SO MANY things to try. Right now we are trying Prozac along with his Keppra, but he is still doing it much more than I would like. Things I will try: Increase in exercise once he is able Have his ears tested for mites Change of diet again Medical CBD (Marijuana extract) Increase in Prozac Phenobarbitol ??? Of course most of these things won't have an instant effect and it's trial and error. We thought we had the problem under control with Keppra, however the doctors said it can sometimes stop working. He appears to be hearing or seeing something when he has his spells, and we think the Tramadol pain meds after surgery may have set off this past bad episode (Tramadol is known to lower seizure thresholds and in at least one published study caused a dog to relapse with fly biting). It's really unfortunate. I worry that he will never get it under control. In which case I never would have done the surgery! But hindsight is 20/20. Perhaps in a few months this will ALL be behind us.
How long has he been on the Prozac? My girl is on it and it took a long time before there was any noticeable effect, but once it kicked in it had an almost daily cumulative effect.
He's been on it for 3 weeks. What's your dog on it for, and how long did it take until you saw the effects? I'm giving this at least 6 weeks before I make any decisions. Amazingly, today was his best day yet in terms of the fly biting! Perhaps things are looking up.
Willow is on it for noise phobias, and fear of birds who tend to dive-bomb her. It started to have noticeable effects at 28 days, which demonstrated as an increase in confidence. At this point, she was still suffering from the same acute anxiety, but I noticed her becoming more competitive with her brother when running to chase a cone, more likely to jump up and down terracing etc. It took another couple of weeks to start having an effect on her actual fears, but since then it has been progressively better and better, allowing me to put in place a solid desensitisation program, which has worked better than I could have possibly imagined. Even at 6 weeks I was thinking it might be necessary to increase the dosage, but in hindsight, that wasn't necessary once it reached full effect. She's on 20mg once a day. She's still jumpy, and probably always will be, but any frights she gets don't affect her for as long as they once did; she'll now be back to normal in a couple of minutes compared to several days. We still have low points and plenty of them - right now, she seems to have lost some confidence for some reason - but most people wouldn't even notice, it's just because I'm so sensitive to fluctuations in her mood. I can honestly say that the medication has been incredible for us. I'm going to continue on it through the winter, because she's not been exposed to avalanche blasting since it really kicked in, but assuming we're able to work through that, I'll talk to my vet about taking her off it come the spring.
This was the link I was thinking of you when you mentioned fly lighting. https://www.psychologytoday.com/…/abnormal-behaviors-arent-… Abnormal Behaviors Aren't Always Psychological Compulsive behaviors can be caused by medical issues.
