Splints for Scruffy, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Hugh and I were walking out to the small pig pen beside their small barn. The pen held a large sow with a litter of eleven piglets about five weeks old. The reason I was here was because now there were only ten piglets. One had been found dead this morning.

Scruffy, a ragged cross between how many breeds, I don’t know, but he was the size of a Corgi, but that was his only similarity to that breed. He was constantly underfoot on our walk to the pig pen. He would constantly try to brush against my legs as we walked along.

“Scruffy, you’re going to either trip me or get stepped on if you don’t knock it off,” I said.

“He does that to every visitor he likes,” Hugh said. “He just trying to get petted.”

We stopped at the low fence around the pig pen. Hugh had pulled the dead piglet out of the pen this morning. The pen looked small for all the piglets, the dirt had dried, but you could, but from all the dry mud on the sow and the piglets, it had been mostly mud not long ago.

“The wife thought I shouldn’t worry about this guy,” Hugh said as he placed the piglet on an old set of boards they had set up on a couple of saw horses. “She thought the sow probably laid on him, but I want to make sure there isn’t something else going on that we need to take care of.”

“These guys are older than the piglets who get laid on by the sow,” I said. “They are big enough and active enough to get out of the way. Let’s open this one up and see if I can see anything.”

I opened the piglet with a long incision from his chin to his pelvis and spread the ribs wide. With a quick glance, it was obvious that this piglet died from migrations of roundworm larvae.

“Hugh, you can see his liver is covered with white spots, and his lungs are congested,” I said. “This guy died from larval migrations. We need to worm this whole group, both the sow, and piglets, and get them out of this pen and out on pasture.”

“I always thought the worms were just in the gut,” Hugh said. 

“That is where they end up,” I said. “When an infective egg is ingested, it hatches in the gut and migrates from the gut, through the liver, and into the lungs. Then the larva is coughed up and swallowed back into the gut, where it becomes an adult worm. It is sort of a numbers game. The body can handle the damage if there are only a few worms. If there is a bunch, this is how things end up. The problem is the dewormers we have now only kill the worms in the gut. That needs to be done, but if you have another pig or two who looks like this inside, you might find them dead. But we can stop any additional exposure by worming everybody and getting them out of this pen.”

I fixed Hugh up with what he needed to deworm the pigs, and he had a small pasture he put them into. I patted Scruffy on the head and headed back to the clinic.

***

The following week Hugh was in the office waiting to talk with me. I figured he had lost some more piglets.

“How are your pigs doing?” I asked.

“Oh, they are doing great,” Hugh said. “I think they are really growing now, and they have had no other problems. I’m here today about Scruffy. He must have gotten out on the road last night. He’s sort of broken up this morning.”

“Did you bring him with you?” I asked.

“Yes, he is in the car,” Hugh said. “But Doc, we are really short on money right now. I wanted to make sure it would be okay to charge things for a bit. Otherwise, I will just have to put him out of his misery.”

“Hugh, good clients can always charge here,” I said. “Bring him in, and let’s get a look at what’s going on with him.”

Hugh carefully laid Scruffy on the exam table. Even being banged up, Scruffy looked at me with bright eyes, and his tail seemed to play a tune on the tabletop as it wagged POP up away.

“I think he has a broken leg,” Hugh said.

I looked over Scruffy with him licking my forearm every time it came within his reach. His skin wounds were superficial. What we like to call road rash, just deep scrapes from being bounced off the pavement. His major problem was his fractures. Scruffy had fractures on both front and rear legs on his right side.

“Hugh, Scruffy has two broken legs,” I said. “Everything else is superficial, and I think we can repair both of these fractures with some surgery.”

“Doc, we are on a really tight budget,” Hugh said. “There is just no way we can pay for any surgery for Scruffy. Is there anything else you can do?”

“These fractures are both on his lower legs, so we could splint them,” I said. “A splint works pretty well on one leg. Dogs will learn to get around so well that sometimes they will wear right through the splint rods. But I have never tried to splint two legs. The legs will heal, but you might have a lot of nursing care during the month or two of healing.”

“That will be a lot cheaper than surgery, won’t it, Doc?” Hugh asked.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “A lot cheaper than surgery.”

“That’s what we will do then,” Hugh said. “If Scruffy becomes too much of a burden, we will just cross that bridge when we come to it. When can you do this?”

“We will work him into the morning schedule,” I said. “You can plan on picking him up this afternoon.”

We sedated Scruffy, but I would guess that I could have put his splints on with him awake. He acted like everything was fine throughout the entire process.

Thomas splints are easy to apply, but the splints are longer than the opposite leg. When dealing with one leg, dogs adapt to the splint very quickly. Often walking well the first day and acting like the splint is part of them by the third day. I was unsure how well Scruffy would adjust to having two legs in a splint.

When Scruffy woke up from his sedation, he had some difficulty just getting into a sternal position. He ended up with both splints splayed out to the right side. He looked and acted uncomfortable. But when Hugh came to pick him up, he was all happy, licking Hugh’s face when he picked him up, and his tail never quit.

“When do you want to see him again, Doc?” Hugh asked.

“I usually recheck these splints at the first week and every two weeks if everything is going okay,” I said. “You need to keep it clean and dry. I would guess that Scruffy will need some help, especially with his urination and BM. Let me hear from you if you have any problems. And for Scruffy, I would like to look at him Monday, just to make sure he is adjusting to his situation.”

***

On Monday, Hugh packed Scruffy into the clinic. Scruffy greeted everybody. He was back to his happy self.

“This guy is doing great,” Hugh said. “He had some struggles Friday night but was up on all fours when we got up Saturday. The only thing is his right legs are longer than his left legs now. So he sort of goes in circles to the left. But he gets where he wants to go eventually. We are embarrassed to say that we laugh at him now.”

We took Scruffy into the back of the clinic and set him down on the floor. When I called him, sure enough, he made a tight circle to the left and tried jumping up on my knees.

“You know, Hugh, I think he knows geometry better than most people I know,” I said.

Scruffy continued to do well, and we removed his splints after six weeks. His fractures were well healed, and he had to relearn how to walk in a straight line again.

Photo by Frágil y fugaz on Pexels.