Update on Shaggy – Day 2

I want to give everyone an update on how Shaggy is doing, so here’s where we are at. This morning he was checked out by the dental vet, and he wants to do surgery in 4-6 weeks to repair a hole in the nasal cavity that was left from one of the teeth he lost. He wants him to be over the trauma and healed up more before they do that.  He didn’t urinate on his own today so they inserted a catheter, and the urine that came out was clean, no blood.  They suspect he didn’t urinate because of discomfort, the cold, being scared, etc. To confirm that his urethra is undamaged they injected dye in the urethra and took an x-ray.  Everything looked good on that test, so the vet says that there’s no reason he can’t urinate if he wants to. He believes that once he is home, he’ll be more likely to go.

After that test came back OK, they were ready to discharge him tonight, but we decided we’d rather he have one more night, and then we’ll pick him up in the morning. We can all benefit from a quiet evening.  We did go visit him tonight and he looks pretty beat up. He has  bandage around his upper torso, he’s shaved all over, stitches in several places.  He wanted to get up and come with when we got up to leave, and that was tough to hear him whine, but I expect he settled down once we left, and he’ll be happy to come home tomorrow.

All things considered, he’s in as good a shape as we could hope for it seems. It is going to take time for him to heal, and we have to avoid infection and complications like that, but he’s a tough little dog. I’m hopeful that he will make a full recovery.

We did find out tonight that the dog that attacked him will be euthanized. The owners made the decision after consulting with their vet. I don’t want to say much more than that about the incident. We’ll deal with that later. Right now our focus is on Shaggy and his recovery. We are so thankful for everyone’s thoughts, prayers, good wishes, and whatever else all of you are sending our way. It really helps, and it means everything to us.