This is Stormy, my gorgeous 15 year old pup (he’ll always be a pup to me), late last year. Stormy started having problems with his left paw in October 2012. He was lifting it, dragging it and yelping. One night was so bad that Stormy couldn’t lay down. He walked around all night yelping, I didn’t get any sleep!

We took him to the vet the next morning and they preformed laser massage, gave him some painkillers and for a few months he was great!
In January, he started dragging the paw again. It seemed as though he had no control of it what so ever, but he was happy and hyper as always. We kept him on  his painkillers and he was doing fine until one day he came inside with a cut on his paw. We wrapped it, but being the determined dog he is, he got the bandages off every time. He even managed to get his cone off! The cut didn’t seem to be healing despite our best efforts.

Last Wednesday Stormy actually chewed most of his own paw off. I’m talking missing toes and exposed bone – straight out of a horror movie! We of course rushed him to the vet the next morning (he did this at midnight) and were told our options were amputation or put him to sleep.
We went ahead with tests to see if he was a candidate for surgery, being that he’s 15 the vet wasn’t very hopeful, especially after we found a mass hiding under his left armpit (the mass had cut off his nerves, causing him to feel nothing in that leg). That night he stayed at the vets and we had to decided if it was right to put a 15 year old dog through such a major surgery.

Then we got the phone call we had been waiting for – every test came back perfect! No arthritis, no other tumors, no other issues! Stormy was one of the healthiest 15 year olds they had ever seen, in fact they questioned his age! (Of course we know how old he is!)

Putting Stormy to sleep was NOT an option, he’s much too spunky and bossy to leave us yet.
The next day he went into surgery, his entire left leg and shoulder (including the mass) were removed.
Apprehensive about how the surgery had gone and what he would act like after, we crossed our fingers.