Post surgical care instructions for your pet often include keeping your pet quiet. Those of you with very active or athletic pets may mutter, "Yeah right" on hearing these words! Although it can be challenging, keeping your pet calm after surgery is critical to a speedy recovery. Here are some tips to help you achieve a quiet recovery period:
- Schedule the surgery so you can be home with your pet for a few days after surgery.
- Be sure to confine your cat to a small area without ledges, shelves, or other high objects they could jump on/off. Jumping places strain on abdominal incisions and can create painful damage after a declawing procedure. Try using a dog crate to confine your cat for a few days after surgery.
- Confine dogs to a small spare bedroom, bathroom, laundry room or a crate during recovery.
- Try giving dogs a chew toy or a kong toy filled with frozen chicken broth or peanut butter to keep them occupied. Get a couple of new toys and rotate the toys frequently to keep your pup's interest.
- Spend extra time brushing or petting your dog or cat after surgery, this will take their minds off the incision and help to soothe them.
- If you have trouble keeping your pet calm after surgery, consider boarding them with us for a few days. We will even monitor the incision site for you as well as administer any pain medication or antibiotics!
Other post-surgical care instructions include monitoring the incision site for pain, redness, inflammation or drainage, ensuring that your pet is not licking or chewing the incision, keeping the incision site clean and dry for 10-14 days after the surgery (this means no bathing or swimming!), and administering all medication sent home with your pet as instructed. If you have difficulty administering pills to your pet, try our pill pockets for dogs or cats! They taste great and may help keep your fingers safe from bite wounds!
Any questions regarding your let's recovery from surgery should be addressed as soon as possible. Please do not hesitate to call! We are here to help make your pet's surgery AND recovery as easy as possible.
Be Happy, Be Healthy
-Dr. Daisy
