Buzz has a limp

[urge to herd]

Since May 13, Buzz has limped on his right rear leg. Did the anti inflammatory (metacam) for 8 days and no running, got a little better, but after about 3-4 days of no metacam and a little running/ball chasing, he was limping again.

 

The vet x rayed him Tuesday, told hubby that he couldn't see anything wrong with the knee or hip, but that he did take 4 foxtails out of that paw. Hooray! Not. Buzz took a long time to totally recover from the anesthesia, ( a separate worry) and he's still limping. I don't think it's residual soreness from the foxtails (and there's no wound or infection there) because my boy is a major wuss, and he doesn't even look around if I mess with that paw. If the paw itself was bothering him, he'd let me know very quickly when I touched it.

 

So, I'll call the vet again today. Any ideas? Dr. said he was planning to have the xrays looked at by a vet radiologist, and there is a vet orthopedist within an hour or so. Blech. I hate this.

 

Ruth n the BC3

[stockdogranch]

Unexplained lameness--always check for TBDs. Although usually the lameness with those moves around,

 

A

[ZoZo]

Both my dogs get a limp now and then that's usually related to the wacky things they do (I was once sitting on the couch and my dog flew over my head, missing me by millmeters, landing on the opposite end, as if this was a perfectly normal thing to do). In the past, I've had Zoey checked and x-rayed for a rear leg limp that she's had a couple of times, the vet never found anything wrong and it finally went away. The guess was muscle or tendon strain/sprain, who knows? More recently, our other knuckle-head ran full speed into a bike rack at the park (he was looking the other way at some dogs). His left paw and leg took most of the impact. He still has a bad limp from that and the vet thinks "soft tissue damage" is the most likely culprit since the bones look good and there is no dislocation. I have really well x-rayed dogs anyway.

[juliepoudrier]

Ruth,

I'm going through something similar with one of my dogs (intermittent lameness, always the same leg, to the point of affecting her work, no skeletal evidence of a problem, no obvious sign of soft tissue--muscle--injury, no drawer sign on the ACL, no apparent diseases). She's been on crate rest for a little more than a week now (we were trying just no work and leash walks, i.e., no running with the pack, but that didn't seem to be helping), plus prolo therapy (I had a thread on that in this section a month or so ago). While she now isn't coming up three-legged lame after lying down, I said to my vet when I saw him last week that the only real test will be when she starts being active again. Several people have since told me that they had similar issues--all unexplained and all apparently cured by 6 weeks of strict crate rest, only out to go potty and then only on a leash. So if the two weeks doesn't work, the next step will be to go for a longer rest period and even more strict control of her movements. That's not much help, but it may be that you just want to go ahead and put him on strict crate rest for at least a couple of weeks and reevaluate after that time, knowing you may have to go as long as six weeks.

 

J.

[SoloRiver]

When Solo developed a bad right rear leg limp I took him to an orthopedist (at SFVS) and had him x-rayed, which revealed severe arthritis in that hip. He hasn't had a back x-ray, but three different vets all think he has back issues also. He is on Adequan and Rimadyl, which eliminated the limp and made him comfortable. He's still stiff back there and he's never going to be as fast as he used to be (not that he was ever all that fast) but he can get around without pain and does not lie around whining at night like he used to.

[MrSnappy]

Gah, I just went through this with Tweed, the Magical Reoccurring Soft Tissue Injury dog. He passed the drawer test and the "dogs with ACL injuries don't like it when we do this" test. Xrays came up clean.

 

10 days of strict on-leash and anti-inflammatories didn't do the trick. Two more weeks of on-leash only and 10 more days of anti-inflammatories didn't fix it either. It basically just took weeks and weeks of restricted exercise (and lots of swimming) to make the limp go away. And I'm not 100% it was gone. I had to keep just bringing his exercise levels up gradually and if we saw any limp, we reduced them again and kept repeating until he could go back to classes. I still feel like his stride is a little short, and sometimes I think I see a hint of a limp - but unlike a normal dog, Tweed paces so his stride is funny *anyway*.

 

Anyhoo, the moral of the story is - weeks of Hell are the only thing that really fix it. Weeks of Hungry-slash-Bored Tweed Hell. I mean, Buzz Hell

 

My vet said "Sheena, I would rather he broke his leg than get a soft tissue injury, because a break heals clean in 6 weeks" if that tells you anything about how IRRITATING soft tissue injuries can be to clear up.

 

RDM