Hippy Hippy Shake

On August 2nd, Duncan and I went to the German Shepherd Club meeting, as we try to do every month. This month’s speaker was a vet from the NCSU Vet School, who specializes in orthopedic problems in dogs. His talk was on osteoarthritis in dogs of all ages, which, while interesting, really isn’t relevant to this particular post.

Duncan was up and down throughout the talk, visiting with folks and trying his hardest to get to a female dog that he likes. Apparently, the vet’s assistant was watching him, and she thought he was having trouble getting up and down, so she asked if I would let the vet look at his back legs. I’m always up for a free hip exam, so I agreed. Duncan’s breeder heard, and she immediately started insisting that he was perfectly fine, just hadn’t grown into his back legs. Which I tend to agree with.

So, the vet watched him trot and then did a quick manual exam of his hips – took maybe a minute. He then announced that Duncan has a disease called genu valgum. He said its mild now, and it might stay mild, or it could cripple him. No way to know without tests. He also said its been a relatively recent discovery in dogs, for vets to recognize it for what it is and diagnose it. A cat scan would apparently prove it, but wouldn’t necessarily show the extent. And for those that are scratching their heads and saying “ge-what?”, genu valgum results in a look that is similar to knock-knees, but instead of the knees coming straight together, the hip is rotated in to some degree. Its caused by a bone growing longer on one side than the other, and the only way to correct it is major surgery that involves cutting out the longer bone, pinning everything together, weeks of recovery, and lots of rehab. Somehow, I don’t think its particularly inexpensive…

While the vet is telling me all of this, the breeder is insisting that everything is fine, he just hasn’t finished growing. Of course, what set her off is that the vet said genu valgum is hereditary. So she’s naturally stressing over the potential for issues with Duncan’s littermates, the litter before his from the same parents, and how to find out which parent might have this gene. The vet also mentioned this might be why Duncan has trouble getting into the truck, although I’m more inclined to think that’s just laziness. But who knows?

After the meeting, I looked genu valgum up on the internet. I found a few articles about it in humans, but nothing much about it in dogs. Since I was at my regular vet’s office the next day, I asked him about it. He’d never heard of it, but he said that this vet is basically God’s gift to canine orthopedics, and that if this vet were to look at his dogs for even 45 seconds (never mind the whole minute Duncan got) he’d take anything he said as the gospel. He did say that he’d probably wait til Duncan is 2 years old and full grown before getting a cat scan, since they would be able to determine the severity a bit better then. So that’s what we’ll do. Sigh.