sweet weenie

my sweet weenie dog, maggie, woke up to a not-so-good thing saturday morning.  she went outside, did her thing and then came in and couldn't walk.  bam.  just like that.  her back legs would hardly function.

we took her to the only vet in the area that was open on saturday mornings and he proceeded to give her a steroid shot in her back and advised that we keep close eye on her over the course of the week to make sure the condition didn't get worse.  and if it did, surgery may be required.  but wait a week, then reassess.

well, thank goodness we are educated people with a somewhat good dose of common sense and we looked into this "disk disease" on the internet.  according to every single article we read, this disease is very common in dachshunds and is most often referred to as IVDD.  and it's serious. everything said that if surgery was to be done, it HAD to be done in the first 24 hours of onset.  if not, the dog would have a 5% chance or less of ever walking again.  paralysis, people.

and the vet that morning mentioned nothing of the sort.

so we bundled her up in her snuggie and took her to an animal emergency hospital about an hour from home.  a neurosurgeon was called in and confirmed that we had made the right decision.  maggie was rushed into emergency surgery, as one of her disks had ruptured.  at this point, she had no movement in her back legs at all, nor was her tail wagging.  the doctor explained that since the surgery was being done in that 24 hour window that her chances of walking again were around 95%.  had we waited till sunday (or heaven forbid a week), not so much.

so that was saturday. today is thursday. 

maggie is home and is slowly showing small movements in her back legs.  bless her sweet heart.  she is doing well, but certainly has a long road ahead of her.

if you have a weenie dog, it is so important that you do everything you can to keep them from jumping on and off furniture and going up and down stairs continually. their little backs are so delicate and they are the #1 breed of dog that is susceptible to this disease.  we were fortunate that we did our research, didn't trust the first opinion and were financially able to do this for our sweet dog.

with that said, maggie would like to show off her battle wounds....