Princess Fionna – Shih Tzu Blog

As we are getting settled into our normal bed routine on Tuesday night, we noticed Princess Fionna was limping as she was making her way around the bed. Immediately, Zach & I were concerned and put her down on the floor to watch her walk. Sure enough, Fionna lifted her right paw as if it were broken or something <gasp> oh no! We start pretending to be vets and run a series of “stress” test on all four legs. . . she exhibits no pain or discomfort as we conduct our testing. We decide maybe she just took a wrong jump during her many on-off furniture travels. We go to sleep and Zach heads into work.

Wednesday morning as we get ready for our morning walk, Fionna starts to limp again. . . it appears to be the same front paw. I start to get a little bit more concern, but she makes it through the walk just fine. She even chases Clyde a little bit as he passes us during the walk. I call Zach on the way to work and ask him to observe her closely when he gets home; I’m worried she’s in pain.

I receive a text message from Zach around 10:30am “Please take Fionna to see Dr. Cheema this evening, she didn’t come downstairs to greet me!” <oh no!>. I immediately call Fionna’s vet (who has taken amazing care of her since she was 12 weeks old) and ask if they can fit her in that afternoon – “we have a 7:30pm available, poor Princess” – yes, even her vet is aware of Fionna’s Princess status.

I get home Wednesday evening to find Fionna in bed with Zach, paw in the air as soon as she see me <so sad!>, she doesn’t jump down to greet me as usual. I know then something is seriously wrong with her. I start to feel around her leg to see if I can spot the troubled area, she doesn’t react at all. I carry her downstairs and put her down, paw still up in the air, and I feel terrible about taking her out for their afternoon walk. She refuses to even take the few steps to get on the sidewalk from our front door; so I carry her to the grassy area where they usually take care of business. As I put her down though, she puts the “hurt” paw down and starts to limp around a little bit. . . eventually she starts to walk around, almost normal. Hmmm…

7pm comes around and we head over to see Dr. Cheema. As we arrive, the office is empty, except for 1 unruly patient that seems terrified of being at the vet. Fionna start to shake and whimper…she’s never acted this way at the vet. I figured her leg must really be hurting by now….poor Princess.

We go in and the vet asks me to explain what we are in for, so I fill him in. We put Fionna on the table and he proceeds to perform real tests to assess what might be wrong with her paw. . . nothing. He puts he down and we call her back and forth between the 2 of us. . . she’s not even limping anymore at this point. What in the world?!? Dr. Cheema looks at me and asks “are you sure she was limping?” Great, now the vet thinks I’m making it up! I insist, so he runs a few more tests. . . nothing. He tells me we can take X-rays if I like, but he doubts we’ll find anything since she’s just fine.

We leave the office with some anti-inflammatory/pain killer for the Princess and instructed to return if she starts to limp again. So, was she faking or did whatever cause the pain just magically disappeared as we arrived to the vet’s office? Until Fionna starts talking, we’ll never know.

One thing is for sure, Princess Fionna knows how to get attention.