My Dog Is Drunk

I took Duncan to the vet today to get his hips checked, since he was limping again this weekend. Naturally, there was no sign of the limp when we got to the vet’s today. Since the vet tends to take my word for this sort of thing, though, he did a through exam of Duncan’s hips.

He wasn’t able to pop the hips out of the sockets, which is a very good thing. Duncan didn’t seem particularly bothered by all the manipulations, which is also a good sign. After all, if it hurt, he’d let us know. He did say that the bones in Duncan’s right leg aren’t aligned properly, but that’s due to the slightly wonky angle of the hip. He also found a bit of movement in Duncan’s knees, which could be a sign of a cruciate ligament tear, but since the movement was the same in both knees, its most likely nothing to worry about. If there were partial cruciate tears, Duncan would be limping more than he does. The vet thinks Duncan’s intermittent lameness is one of two things – a soft tissue problem (sore muscle that flares up occasionally), or aggravation due to the bad bone alignment. Either way, there’s nothing special to really do for him. Just keep him on glucosamine and fish oil, and when he limps, give him an aspirin and a couple of days to get over it, and then get back to exercising. Activity is really the best thing for this, because it will either work out the soreness (if it’s a muscle issue), or it will continue to build muscle mass (if it’s an alignment issue). Of course, the vet also said that Duncan already has huge hip muscles, but what the heck, more muscle can’t hurt.

When I left Duncan at home, he was still drunk from the drugs they gave him in order to take x-rays of his hips. The poor guy could barely stand up on his own, but he seemed really nervous about sitting down. Almost like he wasn’t sure he’d make it back to his feet if he had to. He was also having trouble keeping his back legs from getting caught on each other. Before I left, I convinced him to crash on his bed. He’ll probably still be there when I get back home.

The really great news was his x-rays. The vet said that they would probably get OFA (Orthopedic Foundation for Animals) ratings of Excellent on the left and Good on the right. And the Good would only be because there’s a tiny spot at the bottom of the joint that looks like it might possibly be not quite perfect. It’s probably due to the slight twist of the hip, but I still wouldn’t argue with a Good rating. What this means is that Duncan has no hip dysplasia at all. Not to say he might not develop arthritis problems when he’s much older, but I’ll never have to worry about a hip replacement surgery because of dysplasia.