Prince Franklin and the broken femur

The dogs and I went up to my brother’s house in Idaho for the weekend, to do some relaxing and some running in the mountains.  It’s about 10 degrees cooler where my brother lives and I really felt like I needed to get out of the heat (it’s been around 100 degrees here in Salt Lake).

After a couple of days of good Idaho-living and running in the mountains, the dogs and I drove back to SLC Sunday evening.  When we got home, Franklin jumped out of the back of the Subaru of his own accord and stumbled a little, but he has a really weak back end and he’s 15 years old, so I didn’t think much of it.  He went for a short walk Sunday night, but didn’t really want to walk Monday or Tuesday.  I called the vet Tuesday and asked if I could bring him in for a pain shot (because I had already increased his oral pain medications, Rimadyl and Tramadol) and he only seemed a little bit better.  Thankfully, the vet got us in right away.

Charlotte, 6 months old, doesn’t want to leave Franklin’s side.  This behavior started Sunday night.  I’m sure she senses something is wrong.  And Franklin, usually the grumpy old dog, is allowing her to snuggle in his bed with him.

It’s at this point in the story where I should probably let you know that 10 years ago, Franklin jumped out of the back of my brother’s truck up in Idaho and fractured his femur.  He went through a couple of surgeries and a couple of months of physical therapy to fix it.  He’s had trouble with arthritis in that knee for a handful of years, but he has always dealt with the situation really well and has been a really active dog despite his injury.

6 months ago, in January of this year, he was gimping some and started draining gross discharge from the leg, and it turned out that the hardware had worked itself loose and was being rejected (abscessing).  Franklin has been on antibiotics for the past 6 months and has done really well.  The ortho vet whom we consulted, didn’t want to take the hardware out because at Franklin’s advanced age, he didn’t think the bone would be able to repair itself.

At the vet’s office today, Dr Lynette encouraged me to get an x-ray of Franklin’s leg.  I kind of wanted to hold off and see how he would respond to a change in his pain meds over the next few days, but I could tell she really wanted to get the x-ray.  So we did, and  we found out the reason why Franklin doesn’t want to put weight on his leg:  the impact from jumping out of the back of the car re-fractured his femur.  So here we are with a dog who, despite not wanting to bear weight on his injured leg, is eating drinking, peeing, pooping, and altogether quite happy.

Fracture of the right hind leg is visible at the 4th screw down from the top.  You can also see that the screw heads are above the plate, which means they have worked loose.

The decision might be more easily made if he were miserable, but he’s not.  He was goofing around with the vet techs at the clinic today and begging for treats.  He is a prince.  Prince Franklin.  I’m not sure what we are going to do, but I will post updates when I hear back from the ortho vet on a recommendation as to where we go from here.

I feel so horribly guilty that I let him jump out of the back of the car a couple of days ago. I feel like I should have prevented this from happening.  How could I think that a 15 year old dog with brittle bones and loose hardware in his leg could sustain that kind of impact and not have an injury.  But I suppose it doesn’t do any good to look back and think what I could have or should have done.  We just have to move forward.

Now… I’m going to search online for doggie-wheelchairs…

Franklin, 3 days after re-fracturing his femur, happily chilling in the backyard.