Intermittent Lameness

Samson has been pretty limpy for a couple of months, so the vet prescribed 100mg doses of tramadol for him. She said what we had been giving him (meloxicam — it was working quite well for a while, by the way) only helps with inflammation; it does nothing for the pain. We just gave him his first dose of the new stuff, so hopefully it will make him feel better. The vet warned that since tramadol is an opiate, it may make Sam act a little dopey or sluggish. We'll see...

Torn ACL

Or CCL as it's known in dogs.

We've pretty much narrowed down Samson's right-side limping to a partially torn ACL/CCL. We had an antinuclear antibody (ANA) test done on him and it came back negative. This test checks for any kind of autoimmune problems from rheumatoid arthritis to lupus. Since it came back negative, it narrows things down to some kind of injury; and since we know there's no damage to his bones, it's a soft tissue injury.

Because he already had a bad left hip, he probably overcompensates on his right side which led to him being rougher to that side. I'm sure Abby helped too because she likes to tackle him when they play in the yard. She probably T-boned him one day, and it made him hurt his knee.

As treatment, the only thing we can do is "conservative management" (it's pretty much the equivalent of bed rest). The vet says no running in the yard, very limited activity and to keep him as sedentary as possible, like he's in a crate (if we had a crate big enough, we'd just keep him in it, but alas...). I've been taking him out only while he's on a leash, so that he can't chase anything in the yard. It's also easier to keep Abby off of him this way.

Poor Abby doesn't understand why we won't let her play with him, though. She wants to jump on him and run around with him so badly. I feel bad, but we'll have to keep it up for quite a while. The vet says that if our conservative management is working, we should start to see some improvement at about 8 weeks. He won't be healed in 8 weeks, but we should start to see some improvement by then. If not, then we'll have to pursue other more invasive options (a.k.a. surgery).

We are also supposed to keep him on glucosamine+chondroitin, fish oil and remadyl to both manage his pain and also to promote the growth of scar tissue to strengthen his joint.

Hopefully all of this will work. It's gonna be a long 8+ weeks...

Prednisone Kicks the Limp

A week ago we started Samson on a short-term regimen of prednisone with the hopes that his limping is due to autoimmune arthritis (a.k.a. Lyme disease). In theory, giving Samson a round of pred will "reset" his body and get rid of the inflammation and limp. After two days his limp was mostly gone; he hasn't limped at all in a couple of days now. His allergies have also settled down (for a while there he was trying to get a few hot spots).

We're continuing his antibiotics, glucosamine+condroitin, and fish oil. We'll get two more weeks of antibiotics before he finishes these so that he'll have a full month's worth before it's all over with. As a side note, we're supplementing his diet with plain yogurt to help his digestive system while he's taking the antibiotics since they can sometimes upset dogs' stomachs.

Glucosamine & Chondroitin

After not seeing much results with the glucosamine pills, we've started giving Samson glucosamine with chondroitin; we've also started giving him fish oil pills. He's been on the new supplements for about a week now. Hopefully we'll have more success with these.

Samson limps pretty regularly now. A year ago it was only very rarely. I hope it doesn't keep getting worse at this rate...

Glucosamine

The vet emailed me Samson's x-ray, so here you go! His right hip is fine, while his left hip is moderately malformed.

We've started giving Samson some glucosamine tablets. We're not doing the stuff from the pet section at the store, but instead we got stuff from the pharmacy section because glucosamine is glucosamine regardless of the packaging. ;) We're giving him two pills per day around the same time that he eats in the evening because they say it absorbs better when taken with a meal.

While I know the glucosamine pills won't heal his condition, we're hoping that it will help prevent his condition from worsening as quickly as it would without the glucosamine. Travis did a lot of research on it and has learned that the pills will help the cartilage rebuild as it is broken down by the malformed bone.

Anyways, I guess that's about it. We haven't really noticed any improvement in Samson's limping, but we've only been giving him the glucosamine for about three days, so we'll just have to give it a little time.

Hip Dysplasia

After a few weeks of treatment for lyme disease, we continued to see Samson occasionally limp on his left back leg, so we decided to have the vet do some x-rays to see if there's something else going on. Turns out there was: hip dysplasia. It's only of a moderate level in his left hip, but it still kinda sucks (though we are relieved it's not something horrible like bone cancer with which pyrs tend to have a bit of a reputation). There's not really anything we can do to fix it, and it will only get worse as he ages. All we can do is pain management.

We may try to get some glucosamine to help strengthen the cartilage in his hip joint, but that won't fix the problem which is the bone itself. Also, Samson's occassional dose of prednisone complicates things because he can't be given anything else while he's on it -- it just doesn't mix well.

We'll just have to take it a day at a time and see how it goes. Hopefully he'll age well, and his hip won't get too bad over time.