Dr. Karen Emerson of the Emerson Animal Hospital in West Point introduces us to a leopard gecko whose leg had to be amputated.
Since many people opt to euthanize their pet if they lose a limb, Dr. Emerson emphasizes that a lizard can still function quite well without it.
Dr. karen emerson: good morning, sunrisers.
I'm dr. karen emerson, and today i have with me preston and race, and this is actually their six-year-old leopard gecko named rex.
Now, what you'll notice with rex, rex only has three legs.
She was actually attacked by a cat.
Your guys' cat bit her didn't, didn't your cat?
And they brought her in.
We actually had a broken front left limb.
Now, we did try splinting the limb to try to see if we could get it to heal naturally, but the bones are so tiny that we were unable to stabilize, and they don't really make pins you can put in there.
So what we did is we opted to take the leg off, a simple amputation.
Dr. karen emerson: a lot of people think when you have to amputate a limb on a reptile or any other type of animal, that their quality of life goes down drastically.
That is not true.
They actually get along quite well.
When you see the x-ray, you can see, she was very lucky.
The cat only broke one section of the arm, and there was an open wound, but normally cat bites can be lethal, so we went ahead and started antibiotics and we really did try the splint, but sometimes amputation is the way to go, and your pet can still have a wonderful quality of life.
Dr. karen emerson: how is the cat doing?
Are y'all just keeping the cat away from her and watching more often?
Speaker 2: yeah.
Dr. karen emerson: because cats, they love lizards.
They'll eat birds, so you have to be really careful with that.
And the way i closed it, i actually did a padding of muscle so that when she did have to put pressure on it, it would not cause any type of uncomfortable pain or anything.
So if you have a leopard gecko or you have a lizard or even a dog or cat that something happens and they do get a limb mutilated, and you're really upset about even thinking about amputation, give us a call.
Make that appointment.
Don't give up, and don't euthanize.
And i promise your pets will thank you.
Announcer: wcbi animal health with dr. emerson was brought to you by emerson animal hospital in west point.