Issues with kilted dog-walking?

[Tobus]

Thanks for that link, Crawdaddyjc. That's exactly the kind of thing I may need to look into.

The latest is that I have to take her back to the vet on Wednesday to get a couple more X-rays done for the specialist. He needs to see different views to get the full picture of what's going on. He thinks that on top of all the other issues, she may also have a torn ACL. We're being told it will be about $3,000 just to fix the torn ACL and correct the left leg kneecap issue, which may temporarily get her walking again on all fours. There are various surgical options for her hips, but each comes with risks and different long-term effects. None of them sound ideal to me in terms of getting her truly "fixed", but I'll see what he says after the next round of X-rays.

The wheeled contraption sounds like a great way to carry the weight of her back end, getting it off her joints while still encouraging her to move her rear legs and keep the muscles up. Walking her around the neighborhood with that on might be a struggle, with our narrow sidewalks and lack of wheelchair ramps in some places, but I'm sure we could figure something out.

[Tobus]

Update...

After the last round of X-rays and consultation several weeks ago, with surgical costs still about $3K per leg and no assurance that this would actually "fix" my dog, my wife and I decided to just let her be. The vet thinks her hip dysplasia issue will be OK for now, with the hips forming "false pockets", but the main issue was still her knee alignment. Fortunately, she seems to have recovered quite well on her own. She is walking on all 4 legs and seems to have regained some strength as well as agility. Her kneecaps aren't popping out of place like they were. Very rarely I'll see her favor one rear leg or the other, but she's not hopping around on 3 legs any more and is almost back to her old self: the demon-seed terror of the house.

So for the time being, we are allowing her to have controlled and limited exercise. I'm back to walking her around the neighbourhood, with a slightly slower pace, and no more than a mile at a time. No running or jumping or rough-playing with other dogs. She's doing quite well, although I think her hips are giving her some pain by the time we get home from our walks. She's getting weekly shots of Adequan (a corticosteroid) to help keep her joints lubricated ...or something like that. We'll see how it works over the long-haul. The surgical option is just not the road we want to go down. Hopefully she can just keep trucking along like this for a long time.

I'm taking this as good news, or at least the best news we could hope for at this point. She has her mobility, and I'm back to thinking about being able to take her with me on outings like Highland Games, as long as I can keep the dog hair and drool off my kilt reasonably well.

Yay for June!

[Crawdaddyjc]

thanks for the positive news! glad the pup is getting around better!

[tokareva]

Very glad to hear this good news Tobus. I didn't want to mention it earlier during your crisis, but I personally am very skeptical of vets that want to perform major, super expensive surgery. Sometimes I think they are more interested in filling their pockets than anything. A friend had a similar experience when his dog was hit by a car (don't know why dog was in road to begin with?) and the vet said the dog would never walk again without sawing on the joint and leg bones, moving some tendons etc. They took the dog home ( I think they gave it some aspirin)and a couple of days later he was running around, with a limp of course. Several years later dog is still running around.

[Tobus]

Very glad to hear this good news Tobus. I didn't want to mention it earlier during your crisis, but I personally am very skeptical of vets that want to perform major, super expensive surgery. Sometimes I think they are more interested in filling their pockets than anything. A friend had a similar experience when his dog was hit by a car (don't know why dog was in road to begin with?) and the vet said the dog would never walk again without sawing on the joint and leg bones, moving some tendons etc. They took the dog home ( I think they gave it some aspirin)and a couple of days later he was running around, with a limp of course. Several years later dog is still running around.

My wife and I had several long discussions along these lines when we were trying to decide how to handle this. The vet walked us through the X-rays and described in detail why alignment is such an issue, and it makes a lot of sense to us. But the surgical options just don't make much sense, especially considering cost versus the long-term prognosis. I don't get the feeling that the vet is trying to do something unnecessary, or trying to bilk us out of a lot of money. To me, it's more a case of the surgery being the only thing they can try to do to "fix" her genetic condition, and there's no getting around the fact that it's major surgery, so it's going to cost a lot.

But the idea of sawing both her legs apart and cutting out wedges of bone, then splinting them back together, is just not a fix at all. It's like trying to straighten a banana by cutting a wedge out of the middle and sticking the ends back together. You don't end up with a straight banana. You end up with two curved pieces joined together with a kink in the middle. We talked to some other bulldogge owners about this, and bowed legs are just part of the breed's characteristics. Just like the underbite.

Anyway, the vet did give us some hope with the hip issue, and he actually recommends just leaving it alone for now and letting these false pockets form on their own. In his words, at her age (just barely a year old), she's a "healing machine". That's where all our hope is invested at the moment. We make sure she gets the very best food with full nutrition, and make sure she gets the right amount of movement and exercise, then let her body do whatever it can to heal and correct itself.

[Tobus]

It's been about a month since my last post on this subject, and I'm happy to say that June is doing better than I expected! We've gone from weekly Adequan shots to monthly, and she will likely get these monthly shots for the rest of her life. They seem to be working well, as I do not notice any discomfort or mobility issues with her hips. Her knees aren't popping out of joint much at all any more. I'm hoping that she'll have a number of good years before this all catches back up with her, as long as I'm careful and don't let her injure herself through overzealous play.

I've increased our daily walking distance and pace. My wife walks her about a mile in the morning and I walk her about 2 miles in the evening at a healthy clip. Her only limitation at this point seems to be dealing with the heat. She's doing great! I'd like to get some more muscle mass on her, since she trends toward the lean side, but I don't want to overdo it.



So back to the issue that started this thread: keeping slimy dog jowls from fouling my kilt whilst walking.

I experimented with folding a thin dish towel through my belt and draping it down my leg as a protectant against doggy drool. It didn't work so well. Since it hangs down to my knee, it's long enough that it flaps around and folds back as I walk, offering virtually no protection for the kilt. And it's a big distraction for her, since it's flapping near her face. I thought maybe a weight would help (like a kilt pin or something), but that just makes it flop more rigidly. I suppose I could pin it loosely near the bottom of my kilt, but then it will inhibit free movement of the pleats around the side, etc. So I'm still sort of stuck on what to do here.

For the purpose of visual aid, here is a photo of the issue. Yes, these are cargo shorts and not a kilt, but you can see why I hesitate to wear an expensive kilt on our walks. This is from just one brief brush of her face against my leg while she's panting during our walk. Total soakage, plus a bit of foam residue. Sometimes, depending on how she's carrying her head at the moment, she will only make contact with my calf or the back of my knee, and it will drip down my leg. If she has her head a bit higher, it soaks my shorts.

I know I'm not the only one who has this issue when walking jowly dogs. Do other people just not care if their expensive kilts get slimed?