5 Tips to Endure Doggy Post-Op

I am completely exhausted. One of the reasons I am so exhausted is because my poor dog, Hula, recently underwent a lump-removal surgery.

She had a few lumps when I adopted her nearly 5 years ago, and for a while they never changed and so I left them alone. In the past year, however, they’ve not only begun to grow, but new ones have started popping up, so I elected to have them removed.

The above video is pretty self explanatory, but what I didn’t know was that there was actually a fifth one that I hadn’t noticed yet! The vet informed me that the nurse found another small one while she was prepping her, so they took that one out as well. I've also since learned that the lumps were indeed cancerous, so I am that much more thankful that they took the extra one out!

So now my Hula Hoop has stitches all over her belly, and I’ve learned a few useful lessons during her recovery. If anyone out there has a dog about to undergo surgery, here are 5 tips to prepare yourself and your home to care for your healing pup.

1. Plan the surgery on a Friday or other day that will allow you to take the next couple days off

My vet has designated days of the week that they do surgeries, and the next available one just happened to be on a Friday, so I lucked out on this one. Before they beat me to it, I was going to request a Friday, thinking the following weekend would be nice to chill out and relax while the incisions were still so new. I didn’t know I would desperately need the weekend to nap due to not being able to sleep at night from her whining.

I was warned about whining during that first night by the vet, but I wasn’t prepared for the amount she would whine! She has a very specific whine that sounds more like a groan whenever she wants me to wake up, and that’s what she did all night. My theory is that the anesthesia wore off and she was probably disoriented and uncomfortable from the incisions and the dreaded Cone of Shame, and she wanted me to wake up and comfort her - she stopped whining and engaged Cuddle Mode whenever I would finally wake up and pay attention to her throughout the night.

Having a weekend is also good to keep a close eye on your dog to catch any complications, infections, or bad post-op behaviors that might irritate the stitches. This was nice for me to have some peace of mind that she was just fine at the most critical point of the recovery.

2. Prepare the recovery environment

Other than the nice little t-shirt the vet gave me to protect a few of the incisions, they were completely exposed - no bandages or gauze at all. While this is good to be able to watch them for infection, I would also assume this makes them more vulnerable to infection, so to prepare for this I made sure the house was clean. This meant vacuuming, dusting, and doing some laundry to wash the blankets she’d be cuddling with for the foreseeable future.

Luckily, I only had to deep clean the living room where we would be hanging out during the recovery, which brings me to my next point - prepare the environment to mitigate rambunctious activities. To keep Hula as immobile as possible, I set up an air mattress in my living room and closed the door to my bedroom to block off any temptations to jump onto my very tall bed. The air mattress had the added benefit of creating a step up to the couch, rather than a jump up.

I also bought some doggy stairs in the hopes that we could move into the bedroom shortly after that first weekend, but she is reluctant to use them when she can just jump up so much faster! We’re working on it, but it’s been over a week since the surgery and I’m still on the air mattress.

3. Keep activity to a minimum

Much to Hula’s dismay, running, rolling, jumping, long walks, or basically anything fun has been strictly prohibited in order to limit the risk of popping stitches. And the amount of stitches she has makes this all the more important!

Luckily, Hula is a bit older (I don’t know her exact age, but my estimate is 9-10 years old), so her energy level is completely manageable in trying to keep her calm and immobile. She is definitely frustrated with the short walks - we do not have a yard, so walks are mandatory for her to be able to pee, but we usually go for at least one 30-minute-or-longer walk a day, and she is NOT A FAN of the quick walk around the block and straight home. She knows the specific turns to take that will either shorten or lengthen the walk, and she does her best to persuade me to go the long way. She has yet to succeed and I feel so bad, but it’s so necessary!

Luckily, her pain medication makes her drowsy so she takes a good nap after she takes it, and that helps. I have a friend who recently had her puppy spayed, and she was prescribed a sedative to help the high puppy energy and keep her from endangering her stitches, so if your dog is younger with more energy, that could be an option to keep the rambunctiousness to a minimum.

4. Stay on schedule with the drugs

If needed, set an alarm to remind yourself to give your dog medication at the right intervals. My vet prescribed a liquid pain medicine and an anti-inflammatory pill that needed to be taken with food, both at intervals of 12 hours. I was also advised to feed her foods that would be easy on her stomach for the first day or two, so the lucky duck got some scrambled eggs, chicken and rice every time she took her medicine.

My medicine alarms allotted for breakfast or dinner first before she actually took the meds, which is something that I didn’t think about beforehand and took a day or two to get accustomed to. By the end of the first week of recovery, I was a master at timing her meals to be done right when she needed to take her meds at 8am/pm. I also planned the meds around the drowsiness, and on that first weekend we both took a nap after the medicine!

5. Have a plan if you need to move your dog

If you are able to, work from home to be able to supervise the recovery. I straight up don’t trust Hula to be alone and not find some way to lick the stitches, so I need to be there to watch her. Luckily, I am still working a partial remote work schedule and only go into the office 3 days a week, and I’m even able to bring her with me on those 3 days, so I can watch her like a hawk almost 24/7.

I’ve developed a way to pick her up and put her in the car when she goes to work with me - it’s awkward and neither of us likes it, but it works and doesn’t irritate the stitches. I also use this when she sneaks into the bedroom and jumps onto the bed and I need to get her down.

If your dog will actually use them, then doggy stairs would be a very good way to allow your dog to get on and off furniture, or anywhere else they would ordinarily jump. If I had known my little idiot wouldn’t use them at first, I would’ve gotten them much earlier and trained her to use them when she wasn’t injured, frustrated, and exhausted.

Needless to day, it's been a very long couple of weeks. It’s been about 10 days since the surgery, and she has an appointment to get the stitches out in 5 more days. That will be a marvelous day, and we will both be rewarded with a nice long walk!

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If you enjoyed this, you might enjoy reading about Hula's adoption story, it was quite the event!