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Our sweet Maya is no longer with us. We had to put her down 2 weeks ago. A new tumor had appeared on her side. It was very hard and growing fast. It appeared to be another aggressive fibrosarcoma, just like the one on her leg. We took her into the vet and it was determined surgery would have been very easy to remove it. However, this cancer usually returns in the lungs so a chest x-ray was done. They found a large tumor in her lungs, the size of a fist. The only symptom we noticed at that time was she just wasn’t finishing all her meals. The vet estimated she had 2-4 weeks to live. This news was devastating.

We all spent time spoiling her, loving her, playing with her. She developed a little cough and one week after the news she started throwing up a lot. The throwing up went on for a full day. After that she stopped eating. We tried everything to get her to eat. We even blended up boiled chicken and rice and fed her by hand. She liked that for a few days but there came a point where she started refusing that too. She was still happy and sweet but she quickly started losing stamina. She would be tired all the time but she loved being outside. Once we were outside she would find all this energy and run around, roll in the snow, chase a stick. Even after not eating solid food for a week, she still managed to find energy to play outside.

I had stopped force feeding her. I realized she was choosing not to eat and I was forcing her to eat for my own benefit. She knew what was happening to her. The tumor on her side got much bigger and angrier looking. During the last week of her life all these other little bumps started popping up. On her sides, her stomach, her legs, her neck. They were small but they all started growing. The cancer had spread everywhere. We had to make the choice to put her down while she was still happy and not in too much pain.

About 2 and 1/2 weeks after we found out we took her in to put her down. We played in the park beforehand. There were 6 of us in the room as well as her sister, all there to say goodbye. We gave her love and cuddles and cried. I knew this was the right thing to do but once they injected the medicine it hit me like a ton of bricks. And when the vet listened to her heart and said she was gone, we all just balled. This was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I kind of wished I hadn’t seen her pass but that is what she needed. She was an anxious girl who didn’t like being without us, so I’m very happy she passed knowing we were all there with her. We got her cremated and have her ashes in a beautiful box.

This picture is hard for me to look at. It was right before we put her down. But it comforts me to see how happy and beautiful she was.

I miss her greatly. She didn’t like it when I cried. She would come to me and lick all the tears off of my face. That made it worse mourning her for the first few days. I half expected her to be right there staring at me, wanting to comfort me, but of course she wasn’t so I would just cry more. Her sister Misty is getting used to not having her around. She is almost deaf and we realize now how much she relied on Maya to know what was going on. Without Maya, Misty doesn’t like to let us out of her sight and follows us everywhere. Adjusting to life without her has been a challenge for all of us.

I am so grateful to have had Maya in my life. And I am so grateful that we got to spend almost 2 more years with her after taking her leg. We went through a lot together with her leg. Nursing her back to health through her complications was hard but so worth it. I remember seeing the first time she could run again after her surgery and how excited that made her. She really showed me how special life is. She was the sweetest girl.

I’m sorry that stupid cancer got you in the end Maya, but I wouldn’t trade our life together for the world. I love you Maya and I will never forget the amazing impact you had on everyone. Rest in Peace my Maya.

Hello!

It has now been one year since Maya has had her leg amputated and she is doing great! We celebrated her amputation anniversary by going to the dog park with her sister!

They got to chase balls and go swimming! We even baked homemade peanut butter doggie cupcakes as a special treat! Om nom nom!

She continues to be the sweetest, lovable, happiest girl and she does not let three legs hold her back! Happy anniversary Maya, we are so happy to still have you in our lives!

Once Maya healed it was like she had a new lease on life. She was always an anxious dog and since her surgery she is now less nervous about things. Our other dog Misty loves the water and loves to swim. Maya on the other hand was more apprehensive towards swimming. Now days though she loves it! We went camping this summer and she was so excited to get into the lake she literally dove off a large boulder into the waters below! I of course got scared and had to help her out of the water. It’s like she doesn’t even know that she’s missing a leg. And sometimes this can get her into trouble. It’s so wonderful seeing her enjoy life though.

She still chases rabbits and squirrels like she always did and she still outruns her sister. Here is a video showing how easy it is for her to play.

A lot of people don’t even notice that she’s missing a leg. I’ve even been told by a neighbor of ours “Oh she’s limping” to which I replied “Well yes she does have three legs!” Watching her run around all the time, he didn’t even realize that she was a tripawd.

Having the strain of one less leg she did get calluses on her back paw. We bought a little thing of Musher’s secret, just a wax coating we put on her paws every now and then to keep them healthy. It has seemed to help. She also has experienced chafing between her inner back thigh and her tummy area as she has to bring the leg inward more for balance. Occasionally I put coconut oil on it so the skin won’t crack. Her skin there is thickening up and she has been doing great.

The first time we took her to a park after her surgery, it poured rain. We sat in the car hoping it would clear up. It finally did and we let the girls run free. Maya was so excited she took off running all over the place. I wasn’t sure she could run around that much. She sure proved me wrong.

We got to a creek that had flooded and the dogs wasted no time jumping in, getting wet and muddy!

Maya was so happy! It was a great moment after everything we’d been through.

We were told she would only have a month to live if we didn’t take her leg. Now it’s been over 4 months and she’s as happy as can be. Taking her leg was the best decision I’ve ever made. I thank Maya for showing me how amazing and special life can be.

About a week after Maya’s surgery she started to become more active. All the drugs were finally wearing off and she was learning to move around. However this extra movement created complications with her surgical site. It wasn’t like she was running and jumping all over the place, she just went on longer walks and walked around the house more. The surgical site became very swollen and started dripping fluid. It was a semi clear semi bloody fluid and it of course posed concern. It wasn’t coming from the stitches, it came from what seemed like a tiny hole in her skin below. It was all so swollen that it was hard to the touch. Below is a picture with a tiny drip coming out.

 

I called the vet and he gave us more antibiotics and told me to give her warm compresses in the form of a warm towel pressed over the area. He directed me to make it warm but touch it to my face so its not too hot as dog’s skin is more sensitive to burning. I did this a couple times a day to help and it did a little. Here’s a picture of her with the warm compress and her favorite doggie toy helping to hold it to the area!

 

After a couple days the dripping stopped and it got better. Then it started dripping in another area. This kept going on and it was very frustrating. The vet said the swelling would eventually go down and to hang in there.

Then an area in the stitches actually swelled up and started leaking a lot. With all this dripping it was near impossible to keep the carpet clean. There were blood drips everywhere and there was nothing we could do about it.

 

I took her into the vet and they didn’t even know what to do. I was told that it could be muscle tissue that wasn’t given enough blood supply when she was sowed back together. The vet said this complication is more common in dogs with a lot of muscle, and Maya does have large muscles. It’s hard to stitch the big outer thigh muscle to the small inner thigh muscle and get enough blood supply to the larger muscle. Some areas of muscle could be dying then and this would require exploratory surgery to find and cut out the dead muscle. This was very scary. He also said it could be infected but she was still on her antibiotics. The area wasn’t open enough to get a culture to see if bacteria was growing though. Basically I was sent home to just watch it and see what happens.

To deal with all the leaking fluid we bought pull ups and cut them to fit over her with a hole for her tail. She looked very cute!

We went through a couple of days like this. Then one morning I woke up and inspected the area like I always do and it was all closed up and no longer leaking! It was amazing! I was terrified Maya was going to have to go in for another surgery and all of a sudden it had healed itself. We don’t know what the initial problem was except that maybe it was infected a little bit and the antibiotics took awhile to kick in, I don’t know. I was very happy to finally see it better though!

That was the last of the leaking that occurred and she really started to heal well.

Throughout this we finally got the pathology report back. It turns out the tumor was indeed a fibrosarcoma and unfortunately was rated as a grade 3, which is the most aggressive. We were told that there’s a 30 to 50% chance of it returning and when it does it usually always appears in the lungs. But my Maya is now healthy and has gained extra time on her life. We will cross that bridge when and if we come to it.

Maya’s recovery was very up and down. She would get better and then have set backs. I was given several different medications. One was a strong dose of antibiotics, pain meds for when needed, a sedative for when needed, and a stool former as she had diarrhea while hospitalized. She also had a fentanyl patch on her skin that administered pain meds. I was instructed to take the patch off a few days later. This picture shows the patch as well as how swollen her abdomen got.

 

She was very drowsy and out of it for at least a week. She would have good days and bad days. I gave her a pain pill about once a day to try to keep ahead of the pain. One day was very bad and she couldn’t get herself situated. I tried to help to get her to lay down comfortably and she just started crying, full on whimpering over and over. All I could do was just hold her, hold her and comfort her until she finally stopped crying. It was so sad. Other days were better and she was more perky as seen below!

 

The biggest problem we had was she didn’t eat. We assumed it was the antibiotics but even when she was done with them she still wouldn’t really eat. The only way I could get her to eat was by getting wet dog food (we’ve only ever fed her dry dog food) and then I had to fed her by hand. She would not eat out of her bowl so I would scoop just a little bit of food into my hand and she’d slowly eat out of my hand. I had to feed her like this for a couple weeks until she would finally eat out of her bowl again.

I only gave her the sedative medication once and regretted giving it to her. I gave her a quarter of a pill and it really knocked her out. She barely responded to me, barely moved, and seemed like she was in a depressed drugged state for a couple days.

Her favorite thing during her recovery was to be outside. We’d go out there and lay in the grass together. She seemed more alert and more comfortable when she was outside so we did that every day.

Below is a video showing her getting used to standing up and walking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=900yv-OUp-s

The funniest thing was how happy I got when she finally pooped! She got constipated after the surgery and it took her almost a week to finally go poop! It’s little accomplishments like that that helped us get through!