Italian Greyhounds

Dealing with canine broken limbs...

Chronic pain at the canine level.

For any of you who do not know about the Italian Greyhounds, these dogs are about a fourth of the size of the racetrack ones. Even healthy they have a half-starved look, and even though you may question their look, this is when these dogs are the happiest and most active. Just a pound or so of extra weight can greatly slow them down and can be dangerous for their health.

They can fearless leap. It would do not good to explain the law of gravity to them if you could that is. Exciting stories are plentiful in the chat rooms online about the amazing qualities of these dogs. If they put on extra weight, it raises the risk of the greyhounds leg breaks and other broken bones occurring.

Also, these dogs are fantastic jumpers. At the top of her game, Dixie used to jump more than 6 feet straight up to catch a snack. She could easily jump on the kitchen table flat-footed and land gently even with her feet sore.

Above all, their thin long legs are built for speed. They actually run much faster than they realize. IGs are single-minded when they take off running. Two times I have darn near had a stroke over them running at top speed right into each from opposite directions and then reacting like race cars spinning out of control. When they chase each other, they can scrape by bushes and trees sending leaves and barks flying and they can turn haphazardly, which makes them run into walls and other immoveable structures. This happened all the time.

Dixie eventually ran into the door frame and broke her left leg. This bone broke completely through it. Dixie's small paw was hanging at 90 degrees just below the knee, which showed me what I did not want to admit.

Tried to immobilize her leg the best I could and had my wife phone the veterinarian. He took an X-ray of the leg when we arrived at his office. It was obvious Dixie was in quite a bit of pain. However, she quit crying when I picked her up to carry her. Actually, she was much calmer than the rest of us.

There were some simple options we could see if a cast would work, but the leg might not set the way it should since the fibula was so tiny and then. The veterinarian advised us that screws and a titanium plate was the best option.

The next day the vet installed the screws and plate. This was a tricky surgery since the screws needed to be large enough to attach the bones and plate to fix the break, while being small enough to let the blood flow correctly.

Worse than the pain the bill caused, was how much attention and care Dixie had to have during the following 90 to 120 days. For about 90 days, she had to stay in her crate all the time.

During the first 21 days, we had to hold her when we took Dixie out to the bathroom. She was not allowed to walk. Most of the time dogs like to find their own spot to relieve their bowels and bladder.

Several weeks into the recovery we found out the healing was going fine on the leg. Dixie would still need stay in the crate. However, we could leach her and allow her to stand using her three unhurt legs to go to the bathroom. Each two or three weeks she was permitted to do a little be more activity.

Little by little everything returned to normal. It was a bit tiring in the first 30 days after she got total permission to run. We held our breaths with each run and jump she took thinking we would have a repeat trip to the vet.

It took two years for her to return to where she was before the break she no longer pulls up or yelps when she turns sharply or is in a full run. What is noticeable is she has lost some of her spark. She does not run up from behind on Yankee, but both of them still love to chase the other one in the yard and this is fun to see.

These graceful runners are a joy to behold, they are worth all the expense and trouble we went through owning them. Italian Greyhounds are worth the effort.

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