The History of Lily:

Lily is a sweetheart of a patient which is a good thing because she is a 9 month old 97 pound Great Dane. When Lily was a young puppy her mother apparently chewed on Lily’s left front foot, severely damaging it. If you imagine Lily’s foot as being your hand, the tips of her index, middle and ring fingers were chewed off along with the small toe pads associated with them. The remaining bones of her middle finger grew pointing straight down into the main pad of her foot and the tip of the bone looked like it had been put into a pencil sharpener, the point of it was so sharp. Imagine, having that pushing into the bottom of your foot every time you stepped down on it. Lily’s little finger was broken where it joined the bone that would be her hand and it crossed over the top of the other bones of her “hand” with her toenail on top of her foot. Fortunately, her main pad was uninjured and one of the toe pads was also present, but was on top of her foot.

Lily got along OK until she developed an infection around the nail of the toe that grew over the top of the foot. The infection got into the bone of that toe and when that happened, Lily became severely lame.

Lily's Plan of Attack:

After studying the X-rays, we decided to cut off the sharp tip of bone that was growing straight down at a level that would make it even with the other bones. Also, the toe growing over the top of the foot would be dissected out and amputated as some of the bone in that toe was infected and bone infections are very difficult to clear up. It would be much easier to remove the toe rather than trying to clear up that infection.

Lily's Surgery:

Fortunately, with the surgical laser we were able to make the incision with a minimal amount of bleeding. The laser takes the place of the scalpel in surgery with the big advantage that it stops most of the bleeding as you make the incision. This is especially important in a surgery such as this because with all of the normal landmarks being damaged in the original injury, it is very important to be able to see the tissue well and excess bleeding makes that much more difficult.

As the surgery progressed, two major problems developed. The first was that the skin and other soft tissues had grown into the bone that crossed over the top of the foot making it very difficult to separate out the skin from the bone. Secondly, the infected bone on the top of the foot had fused about halfway along its length to the underlying bones. We got lucky in that the infection had not spread down to where the bone was fused to the underlying bones.

I removed the top bone to the level where it was fused to the underlying bones and cut the bone that was sticking downward into the pad so that the bone was even with all the other bones. After suturing the incision, Lily’s foot didn’t have any toes that you can see and had the large main pad to walk on.

Lily's Results:

Lily made the healing process a little more difficult. Without a bandage, she licked at the incision a lot so we applied a bandage. Unfortunately, Lily loved to stick her foot in her water bowl and splash water all over, which is not good for a bandage. However, Lily’s caretaker was able to reapply bandages on a regular basis.

Due to the tenacity of Lily’s caretaker, who is really good at applying bandages now, Lily healed well and even though she will never walk normally, Lily is much more comfortable and walks on her foot more. This is especially important in a large dog like Lily so that the normal leg is not stressed as much, which could result in that leg breaking down. We now are expecting a long, normal life for Lily.