He's definitely got a "weather leg"

My poor boy.  Winter is definitely harder on him than summer.  Changes in the barometric pressure definitely seem to affect him.  Mostly we can manage this through pain meds.  It's too bad that he doesn't do well on Rimadyl, so we're stuck with Tramadol.  I don't know if Tramadol ER is available for animals, but I might have to check into it.

We have had a couple of "incidents" since the weather got colder where he was in a lot of pain, but it came to a head a couple of weeks ago.  He was outside with Josie enjoying the nice weather for most of the day. We were in and out using the tile saw (we're re-tiling a bathroom) and every time we went outside, they were just lounging about enjoying the sunshine.  Once the sun started to drop, it got really chilly so I brought them inside with me and I sat down to read a few chapters of the book I'm reading when Winston got up and moved in front of me with a weird little noise.  I looked out the window and saw the poor 3-legged fox out there eating something.  If I'd paid closer attention, I would have realized that Winston was trying to tell me he hurt and I could have thrown more pain meds at him then.

A couple of hours passed before Winston tried to stand up again and it was a struggle.  Once he got onto all fours, he was leaning as far forward as he could be to take weight off of his back legs.  I gave him Tramadol then.  He moved downstairs and laid down in "his room" and stayed there.  I fed him a little food at dinnertime, but he wasn't all that interested.  At bedtime he decided he needed to go out and tried to stand up.  He kept trying but wasn't able to.  I finally tried to help him stand up and he screamed in pain.

He made it outside, but he was leaning forward and shuffling along and grunting and moaning in pain with every step.  It broke my heart.  I gave him more Tramadol and then set the alarm for every 4 hours to give him more Tramadol all night and laid down on the couch at the top of the stairs so that I would know if he needed anything.  At midnight he woke me up shuffling and making small pain noises.  I really didn't know if "now" was the time that it would be kindest to put him down.  Sure seemed like an easy decision at the time.  Unfortunately with him not able to stand up, there was no way I could load him into my car by myself.  When I woke up my husband to see if he would help me, he refused.  He wanted to wait until morning and see if it was better then.

I gave him more Tramadol and every 3-4 hours I gave him more.  By morning, he seemed slightly more comfortable and could stand up after a struggle.  I kept up with the every 4 hours schedule for the next 3 days.  By that time, he could stand up without too much struggle and it seemed as though most of the pain was in his left leg (the one where the hardware was removed from).  We slowly extended the time between pills and after a week, we are back to every 8 hours which is "normal".

I wish I knew what caused this and I'd take steps to prevent it, but it's still a mystery.  After 5 days I started walking him again for 5 minutes, and after 4 more days, we're walking around the little block again which is a 15 minute walk.  Today I might do the next block (20 minutes) and see how that goes.  They're bored just walking around the little block.

We've put his ball away where he can't get it, but yesterday when I went out to pick up poop, he and Josie ran around the yard chasing each other.  It was only about 5 minutes of running, but he seemed ok afterwards.