Sarge and Daphne went to see Dr. Fowler today; Sarge for his annual check-up and Daphne for a sore foot.
Daphne started licking a couple of the pads on her front left paw this past weekend, and then she recently started limping. Dr. Fowler thinks she has a soft tissue injury although I have no idea how it happened. (Kind of like when she sprained her back…you go to bed thinking everything is fine and the next morning we have injury!) Dr. Fowler said I can give her a couple of benadryl and 3 baby aspirin to help with the pain. I gave her the benadryl late this morning and she was knocked out for awhile. I am going to wait until the weekend to give her the baby aspirin because I want to be here to make sure she does not have any kind of bad reaction.
Speaking of which…I was able stay home with Sarge about 3 hours after he got the rabies vaccine, but then I had to go into work because I have a huge presentation tomorrow morning and I needed to get ready. When I left he seemed to be doing great. Very perky and alert. Even Dr. Fowler remarked that he looked great (and that his lymph nodes were normal – yay!) But when I got home around 6:30 PM neither Daphne nor Sarge got up too greet me. Sarge just laid on the floor on his side and he did not even lift his head.
I had groceries in hand (including a rotisserie chicken), and I figured that if that smell did not get him moving then we were definitely in trouble. So I unloaded the groceries and then tested him by opening the Puparoni bag. Up popped the doggies! 🙂 They ate their treat and then hung out in the kitchen while I dismembered the chicken. After a few appetizers they both cleaned their bowls of kibble topped with lots of still-warm rotisserie chicken.
After that, they both conked out on their beds.
I took Daphne for a very short walk by herself, and then Sarge and I went for a longer one. He seems to be doing okay, just a little tired.
Of course, I Googled “reaction to rabies vaccine” and all kinds of scary sites came up. I tried not to look at the worst of them. I did read that the vaccine stimulates the dog’s immune system, which did not sound too good to me since Sarge just finished 6 months of having his immune system bombarded by chemo drugs. But neither the oncologist nor Dr. Fowler thought there was anything to be concerned about in terms of giving him the vaccine. He has never had a reaction before so hopefully he was be back to normal in the next day or two.
I was just starting to feel super-greyt about how he was doing. He was really returning to my “original” boy of pre-chemo days, but then we had to go and knock him down again.
Sarge is my super-duper trooper. 🙂
Greyt Matters 