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Rhodry Squeaks AgainJanuary 03, 2008 Rhodry is long-lived but not (as far as I can tell) immortal. Every day I wake up with Rhodry staring at me, willing me to wake up and let him out; every night I fall asleep saying "Good night, Rhodry; I'm glad you're my puppy" to the furry sprawl that takes up at least half my bed -- I know I'm blessed. Whenever Rhodry's "off," however, a trapdoor opens in my stomach and I'm sure it's the beginning of the end. This past weekend, Sunday I think, Rhodry started favoring his left hind leg, the one that Manoog the Friesian inadvertently stepped on Christmas before the one just passed. I figured he'd work out of it, then a couple of times on Monday I saw the leg sort of collapse under him. I started giving him an aspirin with his breakfast and one with supper. That seemed to help. On Tuesday he woke up from a snooze on the linoleum floor in my kitchen and couldn't manage to get his hind legs under him; in the truck his butt slipped off the seat and under the dashboard and again he couldn't get out without help. Trust me, it's not easy trying to help an 82-pound dog out of an awkward place without bending any bones -- yours or his -- in the wrong direction. Then last night, with the temperature sliding into single digits, I went out with my flashlight to coax my sleeping Malamutt in for the night, and . . . For several days I'd been successfully coaxing him up the outside stairs. Last night either his hind legs would collapse under him or his front legs would slide out in front of him. Maybe he was chilled, maybe even on the brink of hypothermia? One Christmas Eve, when he was six or seven, I went to call him in and he couldn't get up -- it was as if he'd developed hip dysplasia in the previous couple of hours. Panicky, I called the emergency vet on duty (years ago island veterinarians worked out a cooperative arrangement for after-hours, weekend, and holiday coverage). She said she'd had two similar calls already that night and that it was most likely the result of lying on cold ground. Give him an aspirin, keep him warm, and call again in a couple of hours if he didn't improve. In a couple of hours he was fine, and though Rhodry has slept on many a cold ground since then, it never happened again. Until last night. Last night was worse, not just because Rhodry is now 13 but because we live up a flight of stairs and how was I going to get my puppy home if he couldn't help me even a little bit? I can carry Rhodry on the flat and when he was injured last year I managed to lift him into the truck, but I had serious doubts about my ability to carry him up a flight of stairs that has no place to rest on the way. After several attempts to make his legs work, Rhodry didn't want to try again. Well, I thought, if worse comes to worst he can spend the night in Sarah's studio -- which is warm and on the ground level. We went for a little walk around the circular driveway. Rhodry warmed up, I calmed down, and he managed to get his paws working well enough to climb the stairs with me supporting his hind end. This morning it was 4 degrees F when I woke up. Rhodry still looked disheveled, he wasn't putting much weight on that left hind, and he slipped and slid all over the linoleum, but he still wanted to go out and sleep on the deck. No dice, Rhodry: you're sleeping inside where it's warm. We went out for a pee-and-poop walk; he negotiated the stairs, down and then up, better than he had last night, but still not in a way that inspired much confidence. I called Michelle, his vet, and got an appointment at 4:30. We got there a little late, but Michelle was running later: she was swamped with post-holiday calls, several appointments ran overtime, and one staff member was out sick. Rhodry, reliably a wimp in the vet's office, whined and squealed so while Michelle felt up and down his leg that there was no way to tell if some particular part hurt more than another. She did find a small hematoma that I hadn't noticed near his stifle, and that might might be the result of an injury. We decided to try rest and pain medication for a few days, and if that didn't help she'd do X-rays. Michelle counted out the pills, noting, "You know you should have had lunch when the Deramaxx smells good." Rhodry thinks that Deramaxx is a pretty good cookie -- I didn't even have to wrap it in cheese. The best thing was that about an hour later he'd picked a toy out of his stash and was walking around squeaking it.
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