Monday morning news

Here goes....

Kalvin and I just got back from taking Harper to the vet for a check of the wound and also a dressing change. We were advised that he is not a good candidate for an "open wound heal" so they wanted to keep him and take him into surgery again this afternoon. They are going to clean out the wound, stitch it closed in 3 layers, put staples over the stitches, and a dressing over that. He is supposed to have 1 week of strict cage rest and voila! should be healed. We can only hope that it goes as well as was described and needless to say we are less than total optimists at this point.

I expressed my concern about Harper's age and the toll that this has taken on him. I also shared with Dr. Carre that we never imagined this outcome and if we even thought it was a remote possibility we wouldn't have pursued the surgery in the first place. We would never want to put any dog through all of this, let alone an almost 9 year old that has lead a very priveledged and easy life. Although she can not control how his body responds, seeing the gaping wound makes me realize that it wasn't an ideal location and it was simply too big to remove as easily as we had hoped. I guess that the old saying "hind sight is 20/20" would apply here.

We've gotten ourselves in too deep to give up on Harper now so that said Kelsey will pick him up this evening, give him lots of love and medication, and follow doctor's orders for strict cage rest for 1 week with visits to their office every other day until then.

Unfortunately when we scheduled the surgery last Wednesday we thought he would be well on his way in the healing process by today. Kal and I fly out of St. Louis this afternoon to go back to Ohio until Sunday. We are going to celebrate my brother's college graduation.

We'll post again this evening once Harper is home.

Until then.......

Melissa