Update on Sindri

We took Sindri in for his surgery this morning. We were debating whether or not to get his leg amputated up until about midnight last night. We finally made the decision to go ahead and have it done. It felt awful taking away a leg that he seemed to be using pretty well (besides the limping), but we'd read that leaving it and waiting for it to actually break from the tumor would be a much worse, incredibly painful fate. So we decided to go ahead with the surgery.

The vet called this evening and said Sindri did pretty well. He made it through the surgery. (We weren't positive that would happen.) The tumor hadn't made it's way into the shoulder joint yet, so he was able to just remove the leg and not any of the scapula (longer procedure and more healing time). Sindri will be out of it until tomorrow morning so we're not sure how he'll be once he wakes up. We've been assured that he'll heal and adjust to three legs pretty quickly, but it still doesn't take away the guilt of doing this at all.

Our initial worries about the amputation this past week concerned his quality of life. The dog loves to run. Period. Would we be affecting his remaining days by providing him with a disability? And further discussion with our vet confirmed that we were really having unrealistic expectations to be thinking that he'll live even 6 months at the most. Anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months left, and we'd be taking good time out of that for him to recover from an elective surgery. You can see how hard it was to make this decision. We'll get to pick him up tomorrow around 5pm and bring him home, assuming everything goes well during the day.

The hardest part of this is going to be how to explain it to the girls. I mean, it's one thing to tell them, when the time comes, that he went to "live on a farm," but it's another to say he went to the doctor and came home missing a leg. I can only imagine the types of fears that will start for us and their future pediatrician appointments.** We've been prepping them and talking about how he had a hurt leg and it won't hurt any more. I've made sure to note more than a few times that that kind of thing won't happen to them AT ALL when they go to the doctor -- it's special only for dogs that are sick. Not completely true, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

** Josie had a toilet automatically flush while she was on it the other day and now she won't use public restrooms at all. We've had to leave stores minutes after we've gotten there so she can go home and use the toilet. We don't need to add any more to her current repertoire of fears.