Evening of 8/27/03: I've been cutting back his pain pills and he didn't have any during the day 8/27/03. So I started to give him 2 last night, but just gave him 1 to see if he still slept like he has been. Well about 2:30am, he woke up screaming. He had moved his butt off the cushy dog bed and his front half was still on the bed. So I moved him all up on the dog bed and laid down beside him. He kept whining and crying off and on and I could not get him to stop. He acted like he needed to get up cause he kept looking over to the other side of the bed a lot. I went and got him a drink of water, which he drank. But he was wide awake. Thinking he needed to potty, I tried to get up to make a path for him but everyone was blocking the path and I couldn't get them moved. I looked over as he was trying to get up and all he did was move from the spot he was in to where I had been laying in the middle of his dog bed (which, if anyone is interested, I made from a 4" piece of foam that is a "full" bed size, took two nylon cheap sleeping bags from Wal-Mart and put the foam inside of it, then I took a zippered mattress cover and put the "bed" in it, then covered it with a full size bottom sheet....that way if they lay on it and it gets wet or they lick their paws and it gets wet, all I should have to do it clean it....much less expensive than a regular dog bed that is not as big). So I went ahead and went upstairs to watch TV cause now *I* was wide awake.
Morning 8/28/03: About this time last week, Sydney was having his leg amputated. My husband said he got up this morning and Syd went out the ramp door to go potty on his own accord. He said after they ate, my husband went out to our above ground pool to do something. He said that Syd apparently made his way out there (his favorite spot to lie in the shade when we're in the pool) but it took a long time to get there. (we have a long retaining wall that you can either access by going down the driveway, around the retaining wall, then coming back up a slight incline to where the pool is at or you can take the 3 big concrete block steps as a shortcut. He didn't see which route he chose, but he came out there, so he assumed he went the long way around. He said he went back into the kitchen while everyone was still outside and the next thing he knows, Syd has come up the 8 steps (3 steps, a landing and 5 more steps) from the garage onto the main level! A few minutes later, my husband went to the basement to check his e-mail and the next thing he knows, he hears plopping coming down the stairs. He watched as Syd made his way down the stairs on his own, taking it slow one step at a time! So it appears that while I wish he would have taken more baby steps (like maybe coming up from the garage into the main level and did that for a few days since there are fewer steps instead of the straight run 13 steps from the basement to the main level) and not tried it all at once, but he's Syd and he wants to be near us. If he feels comfortable doing it, then I'm going to let him, within reason. I've determined that his whining and crying when he's in another room (even though he can see us from that room) is him wanting to get up and come in where we are at. We've just been telling him if he wants to come in, to come on in. And he usually does. He is oozing a little bit from his big adventure this morning, but the incision is starting to heal up more if he would just quit scratching it! His back toenails have worn down a little bit moving so much on the concrete floor, so that's good, but he's still trying to scratch it and it just irritates the skin on top of the incision and just below it. I've been cleaning it every few hours and that seems to help him not scratch it as much.
Anyway, that's our exciting news for today! Syd is doing what he wants to do and doing on his own accord. Although some of them aren't baby steps, it's progress and it sometimes hurts, but it's progress! |
