What to do with Oscar... (long!)
Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 5:34 am
Oscar needs some kind of a wheelchair/cart/mobility aid. At any time I have a garage full of different carts that we use for our foster dogs and lend out, when we buy new carts we generally buy Doggon and are very happy with them.
But Oscar is a challenge, he's not like any of the other paralysed dogs we've had and I don't know what to do with him. It's a complicated case so here's a bit of background:
He was abandoned and hit by a car last July aged approx 8 months and spent 3 days on the roadside. A bus driver stopped each day and gave him water. On the 4th day he called the local shelter (that's Spain for you!)
Oscar came to me in August with diagnosis of 2 spinal cord fractures, both with displacement, and bad wounds on his legs. He arrived ill and it turned out to be parvo. Nobody thought he would pull through, he was extremely ill for about 12 days. When hit by car he was 17.5 kg, when he started to recover from parvo he was 11.5 kg. He has remained very thin, his rear end painfully so. Just as he started to recover from the parvo, one of the severe wounds on his legs opened up and the saphenous vein split, we found him with blood spurting about 4 feet into the air, I still can't quite believe we managed to get him to the vet in time (half-hour drive) and he managed to stop the hemorrhage, and the extra blood loss on top of the parvo didn't kill him. So Oscar does seem to have a will to live!
Either Oscar (or his x-rays) have been seen now by about 10 vets and a couple of neurologists (there aren't many in Spain) and traumatologists at 6 different clinics and hospitals. Nobody wanted to touch him. I said I wasn't bothered about him recovering any function, just wanted them to try and stabilise his spinal cord somehow so he wasn't in pain. Still no takers. Even our favourite acupuncture vet who has helped us with so many difficult cases said all he could recommend was to give him strong painkillers. Nobody expected him (or me) to keep going...
Anyway, Oscar wasn't doing very well, he didn't seem to be in great pain but was getting thinner and thinner even though he ate well, to the point where I decided he was going to die on me. I thought I would try and make what little time he had left a bit more fun and started making him "Oscar cakes" which were just some cakes with lots of apple and carrot in and a bit of banana and some sponge cake to hold them together. And they seemed to change his life
) He started getting better and better, happier and happier, lol. I can't really explain that.
So, now he is very happy and bounces constantly. He doesn't appear to be in any pain, as long as he is in control of his movements. We have a kind of tacit agreement whereby I pick him up in a certain way each day to put him in the bath and shower him. If I try and move his legs for any kind of rehab, he screams. If you put him in a wheelchair and manage to do it in one smooth movement, he is okay, but if you accidentally catch his legs on the saddle or the frame, he screams, same as if you catch them on the edge of the bath. He does sometimes move his legs but it seems to be involuntarily. I have to do acrobatics to put any kind of cream, spray on his skin etc. He is not an easy dog to deal with, very nervous, quite afraid, whenever he feels he is not in control. People think that when he screams he is "putting it on" but I worry that it is because he can suddenly feel his legs. From all the other cases I have seen, my guess is that he has slight or occasional sensitivity due to the unstable fractures that none of the vets want to touch, agh! In all the time he has been bouncing, I have never seen him hurt himself though, and he really lands hard on his legs sometimes...
The main problem is that if you look at him sideways on, he is in the form of a letter Z, the top bar being his head, the downstroke his body, and the bottom bar his legs. His back legs are always horizontal, if you lift him from the floor they don't hang down, they stay horizontal to his body, as though hugging his chest with his knees, and his toes point backwards. I can't extend those legs, just trying has him screaming the place down, so I'm not even going to try any more.
I am fostering Oscar. I know he will never be adopted, because apart from being a very complicated case in terms of how to handle him, his incontinence is of the worst kind, he just loses pee and poop incessantly and has skin problems because of it, even Cavilon isn't strong enough to protect him. Fortunately his intermittent sensitivity doesn't appear to reach skin level. Expressing him is impossible, he screams if you try that too... and being able to express him would make life so much easier...
He needs some kind of special cart or chair. Or possibly something like what you have been talking about for indoor carts. I don't know, but he seems to be uncomfortable with his back horizontal. His legs are in the right position, once he is actually in the wheelchair, to hang them from the back bar, but the problem is getting him into the wheelchair or getting a harness onto him even (I have nobody here to help). Also, I worry that with his legs just hanging he is going to worsen the state of his spinal cord. Not sure if anyone has any ideas, I really need something like a bag on wheels
The Dog Mobile from the UK is for dogs that simply rest on the saddle but the feet need to be pointing forwards, not backwards, and also the one we have here is very heavy for its size, he needs something much lighter.
Anything I put on him such as trousers gets so dirty straight away that it is not worth the effort of getting them on him. Just getting a diaper on him is a major task.
Here is some video of Oscar on grass nearly 2 months ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGQINI3tC4U
Below is the photo of him when he was on the road, and another of him in April (in his "A" shape which is for when he balances himself, his legs go further forward to actually move but still remain a little to the side). You would hardly recognise him as the same dog, but while I really had my doubts about continuing with him during the first few months, he is so happy all the time now that we have to find a way ahead... recently we took him to a "dog adoption day" and he was bouncing around on the grass and even the non-believers were coming up and saying "I have to admit, he does look very happy"...
If anybody has any ideas, or knows if any of the cart manufacturers have done something similarly complicated, I would be grateful for any help,
If you want to see his (hideous) x-ray, it can be downloaded from the url below, for some reason I can't upload it here...
http://www.sendspace.com/file/g86vn2
Thanks
Debbie
But Oscar is a challenge, he's not like any of the other paralysed dogs we've had and I don't know what to do with him. It's a complicated case so here's a bit of background:
He was abandoned and hit by a car last July aged approx 8 months and spent 3 days on the roadside. A bus driver stopped each day and gave him water. On the 4th day he called the local shelter (that's Spain for you!)
Oscar came to me in August with diagnosis of 2 spinal cord fractures, both with displacement, and bad wounds on his legs. He arrived ill and it turned out to be parvo. Nobody thought he would pull through, he was extremely ill for about 12 days. When hit by car he was 17.5 kg, when he started to recover from parvo he was 11.5 kg. He has remained very thin, his rear end painfully so. Just as he started to recover from the parvo, one of the severe wounds on his legs opened up and the saphenous vein split, we found him with blood spurting about 4 feet into the air, I still can't quite believe we managed to get him to the vet in time (half-hour drive) and he managed to stop the hemorrhage, and the extra blood loss on top of the parvo didn't kill him. So Oscar does seem to have a will to live!
Either Oscar (or his x-rays) have been seen now by about 10 vets and a couple of neurologists (there aren't many in Spain) and traumatologists at 6 different clinics and hospitals. Nobody wanted to touch him. I said I wasn't bothered about him recovering any function, just wanted them to try and stabilise his spinal cord somehow so he wasn't in pain. Still no takers. Even our favourite acupuncture vet who has helped us with so many difficult cases said all he could recommend was to give him strong painkillers. Nobody expected him (or me) to keep going...
Anyway, Oscar wasn't doing very well, he didn't seem to be in great pain but was getting thinner and thinner even though he ate well, to the point where I decided he was going to die on me. I thought I would try and make what little time he had left a bit more fun and started making him "Oscar cakes" which were just some cakes with lots of apple and carrot in and a bit of banana and some sponge cake to hold them together. And they seemed to change his life
![Smile :-)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
So, now he is very happy and bounces constantly. He doesn't appear to be in any pain, as long as he is in control of his movements. We have a kind of tacit agreement whereby I pick him up in a certain way each day to put him in the bath and shower him. If I try and move his legs for any kind of rehab, he screams. If you put him in a wheelchair and manage to do it in one smooth movement, he is okay, but if you accidentally catch his legs on the saddle or the frame, he screams, same as if you catch them on the edge of the bath. He does sometimes move his legs but it seems to be involuntarily. I have to do acrobatics to put any kind of cream, spray on his skin etc. He is not an easy dog to deal with, very nervous, quite afraid, whenever he feels he is not in control. People think that when he screams he is "putting it on" but I worry that it is because he can suddenly feel his legs. From all the other cases I have seen, my guess is that he has slight or occasional sensitivity due to the unstable fractures that none of the vets want to touch, agh! In all the time he has been bouncing, I have never seen him hurt himself though, and he really lands hard on his legs sometimes...
The main problem is that if you look at him sideways on, he is in the form of a letter Z, the top bar being his head, the downstroke his body, and the bottom bar his legs. His back legs are always horizontal, if you lift him from the floor they don't hang down, they stay horizontal to his body, as though hugging his chest with his knees, and his toes point backwards. I can't extend those legs, just trying has him screaming the place down, so I'm not even going to try any more.
I am fostering Oscar. I know he will never be adopted, because apart from being a very complicated case in terms of how to handle him, his incontinence is of the worst kind, he just loses pee and poop incessantly and has skin problems because of it, even Cavilon isn't strong enough to protect him. Fortunately his intermittent sensitivity doesn't appear to reach skin level. Expressing him is impossible, he screams if you try that too... and being able to express him would make life so much easier...
He needs some kind of special cart or chair. Or possibly something like what you have been talking about for indoor carts. I don't know, but he seems to be uncomfortable with his back horizontal. His legs are in the right position, once he is actually in the wheelchair, to hang them from the back bar, but the problem is getting him into the wheelchair or getting a harness onto him even (I have nobody here to help). Also, I worry that with his legs just hanging he is going to worsen the state of his spinal cord. Not sure if anyone has any ideas, I really need something like a bag on wheels
![Smile :-)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
Anything I put on him such as trousers gets so dirty straight away that it is not worth the effort of getting them on him. Just getting a diaper on him is a major task.
Here is some video of Oscar on grass nearly 2 months ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGQINI3tC4U
Below is the photo of him when he was on the road, and another of him in April (in his "A" shape which is for when he balances himself, his legs go further forward to actually move but still remain a little to the side). You would hardly recognise him as the same dog, but while I really had my doubts about continuing with him during the first few months, he is so happy all the time now that we have to find a way ahead... recently we took him to a "dog adoption day" and he was bouncing around on the grass and even the non-believers were coming up and saying "I have to admit, he does look very happy"...
If anybody has any ideas, or knows if any of the cart manufacturers have done something similarly complicated, I would be grateful for any help,
If you want to see his (hideous) x-ray, it can be downloaded from the url below, for some reason I can't upload it here...
http://www.sendspace.com/file/g86vn2
Thanks
Debbie