Joy, our Border Collie puppy, injured her left rib cage, resulting in a large hematoma behind her front leg. Her primary veterinarian, Dr. Betsy Gray placed a drain in the area and then as healing began to take place, I took her to Mountainside Veterinary Rehabilitation. Dr. Carlson began Integrative Medicine involving acupuncture, chiropractic and stretching exercises to assist Joy in her healing so that the injury would not inhibit her ability to fully extend and utilize her left leg. Joy is now in herding training and is fully healed with no evidence of her previous injury.
Duke is a testament of why you should get pet insurance on your new pup, even if they are a cross breed. Duke was adopted from the wonderful rescue, Casa De Love, who saved him from a rough start to life including contracting Parvovirus. He has been a good natured and wonderful dog from the start. He has also had a sway and lankiness to his walk from the start. During an evacuation from a local wildfire, it became more apparent it was more than just the ‘hound’ way of walking (we have done DNA testing since, and this boy doesn’t have a bit of any breed of hound in him-Pitbull terrier, German Shepherd, Labrador and Pyrenees primarily).
Radiographs were taken and this boy has the worst hip dysplasia I have ever seen…
We contacted UC Davis immediately and this young man has had a total hip replacement on the left. On the right they attempted a total hip replacement, but it failed, and some damage was done to the hip, so it was elected to leave it as a femoral head osteotomy and allow healing to happen for hopes of surgery for total hip replacement in the future. We have been doing Veterinary Spinal Manipulation Therapy and superpulsed cold laser treatment in addition to his conditioning program and he has done very well.
Duke has rehabilitated from the first round of surgeries and is now in process of evaluating what to do with the other hip. Total cost so far…. around $30,000 so please be sure to get pet insurance on your pups, even if only when they are young :0)