Nothing Too Bad

Reyna had her extremely belated annual checkup today. We’ll get the results of her blood work on Monday, but we’re not expecting anything unusual from that. Doc told me to up her Benadryl intake to see if it will help clear up her itchies, and to call him in a week if it doesn’t. He said one possibility is that she has a flea allergy (since she is, after all, allergic to most of the rest of the world), and if that’s the case, it could be a single flea bite that caused her current problem. Thankfully, there’s still no indication that she has fleas, so if it was a flea bite, it may have happened when we went to the Mutt Strutt earlier this month. Of course, there’s no way to know, so we’ll just keep trying the Benadryl. The vet and I also talked about Reyna’s limping, and he noticed that her left ankle seemed stiff. Probably just a wrong step and something that will go away soon. He had me walk and trot her, and we talked about the fact that she doesn’t have the range of motion in either hip that she used to have. I’d noticed before that she wasn’t taking long strides anymore. Watching her from the side, its also noticeable that she’s hunching forward some and carrying more weight on her front legs than she should. The only way to correct that is more exercise. I’m going to talk to the kennel owner and see if we can work out an arrangement for Reyna to use their swimming pool a couple of times a week. If we can, that should help build muscle and increase her range of motion. The vet also commented that Reyna’s a little underweight (a mere 71 pounds, as opposed to Duncan’s 117), but considering her joints, being thin is for the best. Doc said everything else looks great. All in all, it wasn’t a bad checkup.