Meet Jake.  A four year old black lab who wants nothing more than to fetch sticks, hunt birds, and keep the bears away from the lodge.  A great family dog, Jake has been wonderful to my girls and our family.  Always giving 100%, never asking for a rest.  If you pick up a stick, Jake can go from a sound sleep to four alarm fetching mode in seconds!  We got him from a breeder of hunting dogs here in Oregon (Utopia Kennels) and the owner gave us the "middle of the pack" as far as temperament was concerned.  I am not sure I want to know what the "hot" dog would have been like… Jake is already a hunting machine on steroids.

He loves to hunt birds, and I remember his first Canadian Goose retrieve of a giant Western sub species when he was only seven months old.  That goose was bigger than he was!

Tragedy struck Jake on July 23, 2008.

I received a call while in Ketchikan grocery shopping for the lodge.  One of my employees who was at the lodge told me that Jake had been in an accident and was badly injured.  A group of teenagers had come to the lodge and without permission, had hiked back to our waterfall, with Jake tagging along.  The story gets muddy at this point, but at some point, they hiked to the top of the waterfall (40+ ft tall) and were throwing sticks for Jake.  At any rate, some bad judgment was taking place.

According to the teenagers, the next thing they heard was jake screaming in pain.  He had fallen over the cliff, at least 40 feet down.  They made a stretcher out of some wood and their shirts and carried Jake out of the woods back to the lodge (1000 ft or so).  Since the lodge is off the road system, and I was in town, I told my worker to bring Jake in by boat to the dock and I would meet him there.  I called the vet’s after hours emergency number and they promptly returned my call.  I told them what happened and they said they would meet me at the hospital as soon as I could get there.

I had my two girls with me, and when we met Jake and the boat at the dock, they were extremely upset.  We pulled the stretcher out of the boat and loaded Jake into the truck.  It was clear his left rear leg was broken badly.  He was in pain, but not crying out.  His adrenaline was probably off the chart.  I handed off the girls and raced Jake back to town to the vet.  Probably 90 minutes had gone by since his fall and before we got him to the vet.

At the Vet

I met Dr. Marna Hall at the Ketchikan Vet Clinic.  She was on call and opened up the clinic for Jake.  We had ex-rays done and it showed that his left rear femur had been shattered into 12 or more pieces.  The doctor and I decided to try and operate and save the leg, but she made no promises.  She recommended we wait until the next day so the adrenaline would go down and the swelling would go down.  Jake stayed at the vets that night.  We all had a tough night that night.

The next day, I brought the girls and we went to see Jake before his surgery.  The girls were great for him and comforted him.  They loved Jake and of course they wanted him to be OK.

That day, the surgery was performed by Dr. Hall and Dr. Walton, who came in on his day off just for this surgery, and they wrapped the pieces of the bone back together with wire and had stabilizing rods and pins attached to his bones.  These protruded from the outside of Jake’s leg and was obvious that they would be in the way for the next couple months.   They showed me the post op x-rays and showed me how they did the best they could to give the bone its best chance to heal.

We took Jake home after a couple days and Jake started his long period of bed rest.  He was not allowed to move off of his pillow unless he was on his leash and taken to relieve himself.  This was very hard for a dog like Jake how could run and swim for hours at a time.  He was an amazing athlete, and this was very hard for him.

He was still in a good deal of pain, and every day we had to give him medication and flush his openings where the apparatus was sticking out.

Not getting Better

In the next couple weeks, there were good days and bad days for Jake.  Sometimes he seemed like he was getting better and other days it seemed like he was getting worse.  We had several follow up appointments with the vet for Jake, and those were days we would not look forward to.  He still was in pain and trying to load him in the boat and take the boat ride to town was not fun.  We used a two wheel dock cart to put him in and pulled him up to the truck in that.  Then we loaded the whole cart into the back of the covered pickup truck.

He would scream in pain occasionally and we were helpless to make the healing happen any faster.  After an intense episode of pain, we took him back to the vet and determined after ex-rays that something had shifted and the apparatus was now rubbing on his pelvic bone.  A second surgery was schedule and Jake spend the next week at the vets.

Back on bed rest at the lodge, Jake’s previously muscular leg was atrophying badly.  Over the next 4-6 weeks concern began to grow that the healing was not occurring as fast as we wanted it to.  The vet was worried there was nerve damage that was causing problems.  We started to talk to talk amputation which was a hard subject to broach, as we were trying so hard to let him keep his leg. In September, Angela and the girls had to head back down to Corvallis, Oregon to get the kids back in school.  I had Jake for the next month by myself out at the lodge.  He still had his apparatus, and was still on bed rest.

Specialist

In October, Dr. Marna didn’t think we had any more chances to heal Jake’s leg.  It simply wasn’t responding to treatment, even some experimental sonic wave treatment they were trying.  They offered if we wanted to do the amputation and offered to do it for free since, the Jake had become somewhat of a fixture there at the vet.   I though that was a very nice gesture and it meant a lot to me.  I decided to get another option and got a recommendation from them for a specialist in Seattle, and since I had to head back to Oregon to be with the family anyway, Jake and I would stop be in Seattle and get a second opinion on his leg.  I was reading lots of things on the internet about dogs with amputated legs, trying to determine what Jake’s quality of life would be.  I was concerned he would not live a good life or be the energetic dog that he used to be.

I wasn’t looking forward to travelling with a wounded dog on the airlines, although in the end it was uneventful.  We rented an SUV at the airport in seattle and I drove him to the specialist in Seattle.  These people see hard cases from all over the northwest.  I figured these doctors could give me the final word.  Even if they recommended amputation, then I would at least be at ease, knowing the top specialists had not seen any other options.

After examining Jake, it was determined that he simply had too much nerve damage and the leg as not responding to pain stimulus like it should.  He assured me that there was almost no chance that his leg would heal, and even if it did, it would never function property and just be in the way.  He recommended amputation.  He said Jake would be fine and a happy dog.  I finally acknowledged that this needed to happen.

Amputation and Indomitable Spirit

I took Jake back to our home town of Corvallis, Oregon and had our long time vet in Corvallis do the operation.  He agreed that amputation was the best option at this point.  He said that dogs lived normal lives on three legs.

He did the surgery and the next day we took Jake home.  The transformation was AMAZING!  Within one day, he was a happy dog again. He had no more pain and just wanted to run and play, a three legged dog that had no idea he was missing a leg.  He looked like he was born on three legs!  It was clear at that point that we were way more concerned about a dog with three legs, how he would function and how he would look that he was.  He just wanted to have fun and live again.

Over the next couple weeks, we kept the activity down to make sure he didn’t rip his stitches out or over do it.  But after that, I started hunting with him again and was amazed to find that he could run and swim just as fast as he ever could.  While his walking gate looks goofy because he hops on his rear leg, he running gate is smooth and natural.  He has mastered the art of the "tripod", naturally positioning his three legs to give him the best balance.

In 2009, Jake had a good summer in Alaska and got into great fighting shape for the fall hunting season in Oregon.  More about Jake in Alaska and Jake’s hunting in future posts.  Stay tuned, and tell me what you think below…

See more pictures of Jake