The Mysterious Limp Part 1

Chili puts everything into her play time. She’s part Boxer and plays like one. With that, she’s come home from time to time with limps and scratches from playing. It’s just Chili. Typically, it takes a day for her to get over it. No worries. However, one day she had a little limp that wouldn’t go away. Actually, it would go away, then come back, then go away, then come back.

The little limp got worse so I decided to take her to the vet. We went to our usual vet and I was asked to walk her once up and down the street in front of the office. She wasn’t limping so the vet felt her leg, couldn’t find anything, then after talking about Chili’s symptoms, recommended that she be put on Cartrofin, or Metacam. I’m familiar with Metacam and refused it right away. My opinion, it’s nasty stuff. I’m also familiar with Cartrofin but wasn’t convinced. I was afraid to walk away without doing anything for Chili, so I agreed to the Cartrofin. She would get one shot now, and return for a series of shots over the next few weeks.

I went home feeling angry at myself. I wasn’t happy about my decision. You’d think I’d know better than to go against my gut, but when it comes to the vet, I sometimes lose my mind. After our whole experience with Ruby, I could never bring myself to completely trust them again. I couldn’t shake the feeling. The next day, I phoned another vet and made an appointment. The moment I put the phone down, I felt light. In the meantime, we decided to take her out of daycare and leave her at home in the hopes that the rest would help. Not a popular decision with Chili. Besides, she wasn’t even limping at daycare. She had better things to do than worry about a sore leg. She couldn’t be trusted roaming the house so she had to be crated. Brad had to come home on his lunch to hang out with her and let her out. I felt so bad for her. A social girl really shouldn’t be crated and alone, but I didn’t have any other options.

The assessment by the next vet was thorough. He had me walk and run her back and forth numerous times in the parking lot. He flexed and felt every part of her leg after every pass. Of course, Chili didn’t limp once and didn’t give any indications of pain. Figures. We opted to bring her back for X-Rays. The X-Rays were digital so I was able to go in right away to look at them. There was Chili, still out, laying on the floor, with her tongue hanging out. I wish I had my camera. As she came around her tail started thumping every time she heard voices. It doesn’t take much to get her excited. We took a look at the X-Rays and could see dark areas on the bones in her leg. I felt weak. I couldn’t even hear the vet talking. My thoughts went to Ruby, and how devastating it was to lose her to cancer. I could barely speak the words, but I had to ask, was it cancer. He assured me it wasn’t.

Although there was no definitive diagnosis, the vet did think that she might have panosteitis. Panosteitis is most common in large breed dogs between the ages of 6 and 18 months old. Chili was already 2 ½. Panosteitis is a bone disease that is often painful and can last anywhere from 2 months to 18 months. It is characterized by lameness that comes and goes and can go from leg to leg, although with Chili, it was just the one leg. Typically it has to run its course, but once it’s gone, it’s gone, and there are usually no other problems.

He did offer us a possible treatment option, Therapeutic Laser Treatments. He was considering purchasing a laser machine but wanted to test it out first to see if it really did provide results. It wouldn’t cost us anything, and wasn’t invasive, so we agreed. I would keep my fingers crossed that this would help. She had the first treatment right then. We would be in ‘monitor mode’, which wasn’t my favourite, until the end of the treatments.