Historical February 1997 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Sadie is a 5 year old female beagle.
She lives in University City.
On Dec. 11, 1996 a car struck Sadie; not just any car, mind you, but a University City Police car. Luckily Sadie’s injuries were not fatal.
However, the damages to her left rear foot were severe. (I’ll try not to be too graphic here, but the type and extent of the injuries are important to the story.) The skin on the top of her foot from her “ankle” to her toes was torn off in one large flap leaving the muscle and tendon of the foot exposed.
Some of the tissue beneath the skin was also scraped away.
There were no bones broken.
This type of injury is a grinding or scraping type injury; perhaps her foot wedged under the wheel of the vehicle as it skidded to stop. Because there was enough skin remaining in the skin flap to cover the wound on Sadie’s foot, and because the flap seemed to contain an adequate blood supply, we anesthetized Sadie, cleaned her wound, sutured the skin flap in place, started her on antibiotics and sent her home. Five days later when Sadie came to have her bandage changed she had a fever.
The bandage on her foot was wet.
When we removed the bandage the swollen, discolored foot still had a chance to heal.
We left the bandage off and had the owner run warm water over the foot to clean it and to stimulate the circulation.
When we checked Sadie in four days it was certain that she wasby Betsy King going to lose at least two of her four toes.
We sent her home for the weekend with a special antibacterial ointment that would also help keep her foot moist. At her next visit it was not clear that she would only lose two toes.
A crushing, sheering injury like Sadie’s greatly damages the tissues.
The healing process takes a long time and can involve several surgeries to remove dead tissue and to reconstruct the damaged area.
It concerned us that even if we took Sadie and her owner through a lengthy treatment process, Sadie still might not have a viable foot to use.
As a result, with our advice the owner decided to have us amputate Sadie’s leg.
Now I know many of you are aghast.
I have talked with many owner’s about the need to amputate their pet’s limbs and shocked every one of them when I mentioned the “A” word. We’ve all read too many American Civil War history books.
Most dogs and cats do extremely well as “tri-pods.” In Sadie’s case, she completed a healing process in about a week that could have taken several months.
She would only have had limited use of her foot and leg when the healing process ended.
It is highly likely that we would have amputated her leg after trying for several more weeks to save the foot. Two months after her injury, Sadie’s surgery site has healed quite nicely; she is running about like nothing happened.
Her pleased owner has gotten used to Sadie’s streamlined appearance. Amputation is certainly not our first choice in treating any patient with a limb injury.
However, in certain situations removing the limb from a pet is the best choice for both the patient and the owner.
The story has an ironic end. Granted Sadie was off of her leash when she was struck by the police car. Was it really necessary for the University Police to return to the owner and issue her a ticket? Hadn’t she and Sadie paid the price for her unlawful freedom?
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, February 1997.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1997_02.pdf, printed page(s) 6; PDF page(s) 6.
