Carrie

Poor quality phone photo, but here's my two tucked up for bed on a cold night.

Dory chatters her teeth when she's excited, although not as often now she's discovered that her tail can helicopter.

She looks fantastic, nobody would ever guess how she looked in those early photos.

My dogs were in the situation where someone came into their house earlier this year. Prior to that I'd always suspected that Ben would defend the house if need be and everyone who knows him well is convinced that he'd defend me if the need ever arose. With the incident in the house, both dogs were outside at the time, so they could only hear all the screaming. It has had a big effect on both of them and they're become very good guard dogs since then. On the subject of meter men, I had one who I had to do the meter readings for whilst he stood on the doorstep in tears because he was terrified of dogs. I was dying to laugh when he asked me how to find a few other houses in the village. I hadn't the heart to tell him that one was home to a Border Collie and Jack Russell, another had a big daft lump of Labrador and the final house he needed to go to was home to a big Bull Terrier cross. If he had such a fear of dogs he really was in the wrong job.

I'm really not a big fan of wearing wellies, so most of the time I stick to hiking shoes (don't get on with boots due to knackered achilles tendons) - http://www.landmarkstores.com/Renegade%20L...px?SP140&C2 If I do need to resort to wellies then I have a pair of Hunters.

Just to prove he doesn't always look serious Plus I have to contend with Dory adopting her favourite position on walks

Hope all goes well with whatever they decide to do. Have PM'd you my e-mail addy

Hello there, just joined to post some info in the amputation topic. I'm Carrie and I'm from Lancashire. My dogs are Ben, a Labrador Cross who is about 8 years old and Dory, a tripod Lurcher who's about 6. Both are rescues.

It was a fun day yesterday and nice to meet you and your lovely dogs. Just hope Lottie doesn't get any future ideas about scaring us in future by jumping over the boundary barrier. Dory cheated on her first run as well, so I'm still amazed she stuck to the track for her second run.

Hello all, Jane told me about this topic at the weekend. I'm the owner of Dory, the Lurcher who Jane has already written about. Dory was in a snare before we found her and the vet guessed that her wound at that stage was already a couple of weeks old. She had all the bones in her back leg exposed and had lost tendons etc. Initially we expected that the vet at the hospital would choose to amputate as soon as he saw her, but he said she still had feeling in the leg and she'd looked after the wound well, so he wanted to try to save it. Initially she was bandaged and the vet wanted to do a skin graft. When she had her GA for that graft he found that her skin / flesh was just too badly scarred and immobile, so he couldn't do the graft. That meant the start of a long process trying to get the leg to heal. Bandaged at first, but that led to pressure sores and she ended up with a bad fever as a result of those. After that we had to try to just let the leg heal naturally because of all the additional problems the bandages were causing. Months later and the leg healed, but the skin was just so thin that the slightest knock caused damage again and so the decision was taken to try another skin graft. As she'd been in very poor condition when found, the vet was hoping that the condition of her skin might have improved with better diet and overall health. The first graft looked very promising and was going well for a couple of weeks, but then it suddenly failed. After that she went back in for another graft, this one a bigger op taking skin from the top of her leg. The time after that graft really was awful, it was the first time Dory was obviously in a lot of pain and we had problems with fluid building up behind the graft. She was having her dressings changed daily and her leg was about 3 times the size it should be and although the vet said the graft was taking, her whole leg was this horrible black colour. We had a week and a half of that and shortly after her stitches were removed from the top of her leg, we got up to find her leg smelling horribly. She was readmitted and the vet came in to assess her on his day off, the news wasn't unexpected, the graft had failed. The next day I was given the choice of trying to let her leg heal again or amputate. It really wasn't an option to try healing her leg again, I couldn't put her through anymore pain, she'd been through so much with that second graft. My only concern was whether there were likely to be problems with the surgical wound healing (I'll admit that by that stage I was paranoid due to the fact she would damage her wound just getting up off her bed). As well as speaking to the vets, I also spoke to Kaye from Lurcher Link to ask whether she'd ever had any problems with surgical wounds not healing on lurchers and what her experiences were with tripods. Both reassured that there should be no problems with a surgical wound. If it's a rear leg amputation they will remove the whole leg to avoid damage to any remaining part of a limb which would essentially flap around without the dog being able to control it. So, Dory had her amputation op whilst I was 240 miles away on a business trip and we were told that she'd stay in the hospital for 24 hours and then we could pick her up. When we picked her up the next day we were greeted with the first tail wag she'd done since that second graft was done. Kaye had said that some of the tripods she'd known had jumped into the car when picked up from the vets, Dory was obviously still tired and had to be lifted in and that day we just left her quietly on her bed once she got home. We were told that there was no reason she couldn't do anything and that she could go on walks as normal until the staples were removed. The following day she was very lively and pottering around the house quite happily with my Labrador. We only gave her a short walk, but it was obvious she could have done longer if allowed. Just a few days later and before she had her staples out, she did a 4 mile walk on rough terrain over the moors. She had her staples removed after 12 days (could have been 10, but it was a weekend). Once the staples were removed there was just one section, the length between two staples, which was weeping a little bit and so it took about a week for that to heal completely. She was very good and never tried to get at the wound or staples the whole time it was healing. The longest part of her recovery was waiting for her bruises to fade. All of her tummy and all down the inside of her remaining back leg was bruised. Those bruises really did look very nasty and would vary in intensity and coverage through the day, almost as if exercise brought more blood to the surface. Given how bruised and swelled her tummy was, it wasn't really any surprise to find that she was temporarily incontinent. We found that she would have a little wee when jumping or being lifted in and out of the car and when sleeping overnight. It took about a month for that incontinence to stop. The drawback of having a tripod - all the people who stop you on walks and comment on what a shame it is. Those people would never say that if they got to see her running around! She might not have quite the stamina for longer bursts of running like she did before, but is still very fast and enjoys running round like a mad thing. She also loves long walks. If you're walking with a tripod you soon find that walking at a faster pace is easier for them than walking at a slower pace. Dory isn't keen on going up steps (it's her decision not to come upstairs in the house very often), but is perfectly capable of doing. Sometimes I do wonder if she'll have joint trouble in later life (she's thought to be about 6 years old) because quite often she stands with her remaining back leg at quite a twisted angle, I guess it makes it easier for weight distribution. Not something that's worth worrying about though, it's just something we'll deal with if it ever becomes necessary. Here she is in February with her big bandage after her second graft. She was a very poorly little girl at this point who didn't want to know about anything in life. A couple of weeks after her amputation in March this year. Out on a walk at the end of March, you can see her fur still hadn't grown back at this point. Having a run in early June. As Jane has already shown, she took part in a tripod race in June and she was also running on a track yesterday. Finally, a happy little tripod.