WWHHYYYYYY???

I had originally intended to post an update on Samson's bum knee, but Abby presented me with a more upbeat topic:



"Why???" I ask. "MOMITWASSOMUCHFUN!" Abby says in answer.

She got a serious bath afterwards. It was so hard to lather up her fur with all of that gritty mud in it. It took almost a whole bottle of dog shampoo! Thankfully she's all clean now.

As for Samson, we think that we're starting to see some improvement in his walking. He's using his right leg to scratch more often now, so hopefully that counts. He still has a very prominent limp, but we think it might be getting a little bit better.

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...

Rimadyl for Samson

Well, we've given him four weeks of antibiotics and about three weeks of prednisone. Soon as we started to ween him off of the pred, his limp returned. He's still favoring his right leg even though we can't find anything wrong with it. Travis is going to call a couple of orthopedic vets for some advice. We're thinking about taking him in to see one of them so they can maybe to an MRI or something to check the soft tissue for injuries since we already know his bones are fine.

His limp is really pretty bad when he's off the prednisone. It's hard seeing him hurt, but we ordered him some Rimadyl (or rather the off-brand version) and it came in the mail today. We gave him his first pill earlier this afternoon, so hopefully we'll start to see him feeling better in a couple of days.

We're also going to continue giving him this glucosamine+chondroitin and fish oil pills. lol Sam and Abby eat those things like Gushers. xD In fact, Abby has already broken into two jars of the fish oil pills and eaten a third of a bottle the first time, and well over half a bottle the second time. After the second time, we decided to keep the pills in the upper kitchen cabinets instead of our bathroom countertop.

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.

So now it's the OTHER leg...

We took Samson to the vet yesterday because we've been noticing for about a month that he now limps to favor his right leg. We know it's not due to hip dysplasia because of his previous xrays, so Travis called up the doctor and was told that we could get a follow-up check-up for a reduced cost as well as a full set of new xrays for just $33, so Trav packed up the dog and hauled him to the vet.

Nothing new showed up on the xrays, but they felt all over his legs and seemed to think that his right knee was more swollen than his left so he may have injured his ACL. They weren't, however, able to get any slippage in the joint like what would be expected with a torn or damaged ligament. Because we can't confirm this theory, we'll just limit Samson's activity for the next two or three weeks and hope that if it is indeed an injured ACL, it can have some time to heal on its own without exploratory surgery.

The other theory is that his limping is due to the tick-born illness that we improperly treated Samson for the last time we took him in. Because the test for Lyme disease can (apparently) easily produce false negatives, we decided to forgo said test and just treat for it anyway. We were given two weeks of antibiotics which we will dispense correctly this time (we did it wrong last time because we misinterpreted the instructions).

Keeping our fingers crossed that he feels better soon! He's having such a difficult time getting up and walking around. :(

Also, peanut butter is really starting to lose it's value to him because of all the pills we've been giving him. lol

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...

A Little Sibling Rivalry

Not my dog and cat. lol

Samson and Abby had their first fight last night. Here's how it went down...

We're renting out our house this weekend for the football game, so we're staying at my parents' house. I had taken the dogs and Oscar to my parents' house yesterday morning before I went to work because our renters were going to arrive at our house at noon. The dogs had been at my parents' house all day and hadn't eaten anything yet (which is like their usual schedule anyway - they tend to eat just once in the evening), so Travis gave them each a rawhide chew to tide them over before we fed them when we went to bed. They ate the treat without any problems.

The trouble came afterwards when Travis put out some of their toys; a couple of the toys were ones in which we often put peanut butter or other treats (they didn't have anything in them this time, though). I guess the stress of being in an unfamiliar place was too much, because as soon as Travis set them on the floor, Abby and Sam just went at it! A lot of growling and barking and showing of teeth, but they never really bit each other (which is usually how most dog fights go anyway). We were able to break it up pretty quickly so the fight probably didn't last 30 seconds. Once they were quiet, we put them face to face with their treats between them, so they'd accept each other and make up. They behaved fine after that, so we gave them some supper (on opposite sides of the room just to be safe lol) to quell the Hunger Monster.

It was quite an exciting evening!