Harvey foster journal: 2nd week

Harvey finished up his course of antibiotics without any improvement to the area on his chest. With the abscess still open and swollen an appointment was made for him to Dr Kang. After examining the area, Dr Kang was certain something was still inside. He had originally explained that when a foxtail is removed often small pieces remain and will find their way out as the body heals. However, it had been over two weeks and the area was still swollen.  Dr Kang first applied a local anesthetic and explored just below the surface. When nothing was found, he said he would need to go deeper to investigate and surgery was scheduled for later that afternoon. When we picked up Harvey, we were amazed at the size (nearly 6 cm long) of the foxtail and attached stem that had been removed from between Harvey’s ribs. Dr Kang stated that foxtail appeared to be moving toward Harvey’s lung and it was good that it had been removed before it was a more complicated surgery.We returned home with Harvey who, by the way, was quick to recover. Like so many other GSPs that we have “nursed” back to health, if you didn’t see the stitches that held the incision together, you would never know Harvey had had surgery earlier that day. He still thought he could run and play like normal. However, not wanting him to pull the stitches out, his activity was limited for the next several days. On Saturday in the training field, he wasn’t happy being leashed while all the other dogs got to run and play but, being an easy going GSP, he soon realized the reward was the extra attention that he received.The Vet bill for Harvey’s surgery isn’t much but comes at a time when the CA GSP Rescue has had several other larger than normal Vet bills. It was quickly decided that we would need to put up a ChipIn fundraiser to take care of Harvey’s and the other Vet bills.