The operation went well and Peppi is home.
The stitches are to come out in ten days. In the meantime the vet’s orders are that she has to be kept quiet. For TEN DAYS.
This means no walks, no running around, no jumping, and no playing with Paco. Normally they love wrestling and play fighting and can get quite rough with each other.
Peppi spent the night in the laundry last night. Much scratching at the barricades, whimpering and general distress. Paco didn’t sleep much either. He made many trips to the barrier where he whined and tried to get a glimpse of Peppi.
I’m not sure how we’ll all survive the next ten days.
The only good thing about this is, so far Peppi’s been too anxious about being separated, to worry at her stitches.
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Oh dear – that IS going to be a mission! Glad the op was trouble free though.
One of our cats came home from the same operation and after she had recovered from the grogginess, chewed through her stitches one by one. Fortunately the wound had knitted sufficiently to stay closed!
Our two cats went in together, and by the time they’d finished cat number 2, cat number 1 had woken up and chewed through her stitches already, and they had to redo them…
I’ve just had a 3-day weekend so have been able to keep an eye on the two dogs – it’s going to be interesting/nervewracking to see how Peppi gets through today as I will be back at work. So far she hasn’t chewed through her stitches; she doesn’t seem to care about them at all – and the wound is quite clean and unremarkable. One problem, such as it is, is that she’s not meant to jump around, but the little terror loves hopping on and off the couch, the bed, assorted chairs… it’s stressful enough when she’s NOT had an operation. We have tried tying her but I don’t think it’s going to be possible when no one’s home to supervise, as she tends to get herself all tangled.
The other problem is that Paco loves play wrestling with her, and the play normally gets quite rough. Interestingly, Paco has actually been trying to be very gentle with Peppi ever since he’s sniffed her belly with its stitches, but she has no hesitation in jumping on him to get him to play, so of course he then forgets himself. We’ve tried separating them by putting Peppi in the laundry, but she hates it and spends much of the time jumping as high as she can, to see over the barricades. On Sunday all the jumping and scrabbling against the wooden barricades caused tiny cuts on her little paws, so that there were blood droplets all over the floor. There wasn’t a lot of blood, but it was still quite dramatic to see the fine droplets all over the floor where she had been pacing…
I’m telling myself that it’s been quite a few days since the op so hopefully the wound has knit sufficiently and it won’t matter whether Peppi is kept quiet or not.
I talked to my mum who’s a vet nurse, and she says that it’s probably better to let her play with Paco than to stress her by keeping her away. She suggests taking her for some gentle meandering casual sort of walks to try to burn off some of her energy so she won’t want so desperately to play. Mum says she knew of one dog who went swimming in a lake on the day of her operation and was fine – I’m sure Peppi will be too! Hope today’s ‘home alone’ went well 🙂
(This is Akkadis, actually, btw)
Thanks Akkadis 🙂 I think that’s good advice – we have left Peppi free with Paco during the day and so far so good. The two dogs play and Paco treats her more or less the way he normally does, and she tells him off with little sharp barks if she doesn’t like what he’s doing.
What’s really stressing me out is watching her take flying leaps off chairs, armchair arms, you name it. It’s hair-raising enough to watch when she’s not got three stitches in her belly! She’s a mad dog, that one. Definitely more highly strung than Paco.