Rougarou
Hi, my name is Amy and my puppy is Ruby. She’s a mutt. My best guess is Boxer with maybe Pit Bull? She’s got many nicknames: Rubert, Wiggle Butt, Sweets, but my favorite is Rougarou. My Dad started calling her that from day 1. (FYI – a Rougarou is a mythical monster similar to a werewolf. I don’t think Ruby bears much resemblance.)
Ruby’s had a rough life. She was found as a stray about 3 days before I adopted her. She was skin and bones, had mange, and wound up with kennel cough. They had her listed on the site as a Puggle (which I adore) so I drove down to see her. It was immediately clear she was NOT a Puggle, but when this poor, sad, skinny puppy crawled into my lap and went to sleep I was in love. No way I was leaving without her. They guessed she was about a year old, but she was so underweight it was hard to tell.
Ruby’s first year with me.
Fast forward to the present. I’ve had her for nearly 3 years (so she’s only 4ish now). About a month and half ago I noticed she was being very ginger with her left rear leg, but she was still running and playing like normal. Then a few days later she was standing on the laminate floor and slipped a bit. The yelp she let out broke my heart. I took her to the vet that evening, and they though it might be an ACL (CCL) injury and recommended 2 weeks crate rest. Even with me carrying her up and down all the stairs in my town home for 2 weeks, she seemed to be getting worse.
Back to the vet. Still thought it might be ACL tear, but she turns into a statue at the vets so it was hard to tell. In my heart, I knew it wasn’t just an ACL tear, but she was in so much pain and wouldn’t put any weight on the leg at this point I went ahead and scheduled surgery for August 24th. I figured if it wasn’t ACL they’d find out for sure once she was sedated.
Come the 24th. I dropped my Ruby off in the Morning and the vet said they wanted to do some x-rays to check it out before they started surgery. About 1 o’clock I got a call. I figured they were going to start surgery. No. It was the vet… no ACL tear… it’s a tumor.
My heart dropped. I think I knew in the back of my mind that was it was way worse than just an ACL injury, but to hear that my 4 year old dog might have cancer gutted me. I got all flustered on the phone while the vet tried to talk through my options so she told me to come down.
I got there and they showed me the x-ray. I could see the large lytic region on her tibia near the knee. They said they could biopsy and send it out and wait for results, or just amputate today since she was already scheduled for surgery. We did some chest x-rays first to check for metastases before we did anything. That was a long wait, but those were clear so I just decided to go ahead with the surgery. Like I told my mom on the phone, “I’m just not ready to lose her.”
She’s home now and though the first couple days were rough, she’s adapting to tripawd life quickly. She even seems to be able to navigate the step off the deck to the backyard better than when she was carrying that painful 4th leg.
Napping Day 6 Post-Op with Harry the cat.
I still don’t know if I did the right thing. We don’t even know for sure if it was cancer yet, but the vet looked at the tumor after the amputation and said it was bad and she was surprised Ruby hadn’t broken her leg already. I’m now in limbo waiting for pathology results. I found this site literally minutes after I agreed to amputation surgery for my dog (which I had about 20 minutes to prepare for). It helped me tremendously to have this resource the last couple of days. It’s been great to see all the kind words posted here for others, you’re all amazing people. Now that my Rubert is back to snuggling with me on the couch I finally felt ready to share my story.
