Hello! Do we have any veterinarians here? What am I saying, of course we do, we have everyone here. We have a prison doctor, adult film maker, former prostitute, particle physicists, famous magicians, talking chocolate bar, countless lawyers of every type, politicians, nurses, experts of every stripe, everything!
Anyway, back to my question. I have an old dog, around 12 or 13 years old (we got him from a shelter around 11 years ago, and the shelter claimed he was only a year old then). He’s around 25 pounds, some kind of beagle mix, maybe with a pug. Lately, maybe the last 3 or 4 days, when he first gets up, he has a very bad limp, seemingly favoring his right front paw. After a little while, it gets much better and you can barely notice it.
Is this just some sort of age-related stiffness? He doesn’t seem to have anything stuck in his paw – could it be a knee (er, elbow?) problem? Should I take him to the vet right away or wait a couple of days and see if it gets better?
Did you visually inspect his paw very closely to see if he has something stuck in there? Sometimes the fur on my dogs pads gets matted into a hard oily chunk, eventually causing a limp. Just cutting it out solves the issue. You might want to check and see fir yourself what’s going on!
Good Luck!
He doesn’t really like his feet touched. When he’s had a stone stuck between his toes, it was tricky getting him to sit still to let me get it out. I think he had some pretty bad experiences before we got him and is still very skittish about being held. I’ve tried to rub his feet to find something, but no luck so far in the very small amount of time he lets me do that.
The reason I don’t think it’s that is that the limp mostly goes away after a few steps. When he has had something stuck in his paw (stone or burr), the limp sticks around.
As JcWoman said, it’s likey arthritis, and there are meds they can give him that will help relieve the pain and stiffness, but a vet needs to rule out something more sinister. Given the age of the dog arthritis is not an unusual condition to have.
I was raised by a dachshund. As everyone knows, dachshunds are very susceptible to having severe, crippling-level low back problems as they age. Ours did. From time to time, he’d completely lose the use of his hind legs, dragging himself around on his butt by his front legs. He also screamed in pain a lot. :eek:
So we took him to the vet, of course. The vet gave him a shot of something. (Cortisone, I suppose, although I knew nothing of such things at the time.)
By the time we got back home, he was running around like a puppy again.
When I get older and more arthritic than I already am, I know what kind of doctor I’m going to!
Just arthritis. He’s got some weakness in his back legs as well, which could be arthritis. They gave me some doggie Advil to feed him. I have to check in with them in a couple of weeks. Anyway, thanks for all the help!
I have a 13 year old dog with the exact same problem including same leg so I’m interested in hearing what you find. It’s been happening for a couple weeks and I figured it was just he injured himself (he is in very good shape and still spazz’s out and runs around crazily when excited - he needs to slow that down).
We still take him on 5-8 mile walks once a week along with 1-2 daily shorter walks but we are hesitant to take him on the longer walks right now. I think I need to get him in to the vet too.
My dog, too. We came back from the vet and he was catching frisbees in the air like a champ. As I mentioned above, once he gets moving, he seems much better. He’s in good shape, but starting to show his age. Sigh.
I’ll report back if there are any further developments.
I had a rat terrier who died at 23, she had arthritis in her hips for at least 10 of those yesrs. She couldn’t tolerate nsaids of any type. So we got the supplements,(cocusin,mispelled), they were a life saver.vet didn’t like it, but he couldn’t argue with the results. By the time she was close to death, basically her last year, she was blind and deaf, she still enjoyed her walks and eating her food. So we just let her play out that year . She died in her sleep in her favorite sleeping spot.
This is very timely for me. Last night, our7 or 8 year old shih tzu got up and immediately started limping and holding his right front paw up. My daughter saw him get up and thinks he got up a little funny, if you will. Anyway, it happened once before, but he was fine very soon afterwards. He is still limping now, but the crazy thing is, he seems ok once he’s outside and walking. I don’t know what to make of it. When he was at the vet back in May, she said he didn’t seem to be showing any signs of arthritis.
They might need nail trims, too, especially if you don’t do it often because they don’t like their feet handled. The groomers around here will do walk-in manicures for about $12. I think that’s pretty reasonable, if you don’t want to do it yourself. Letting their nails grow too long can make their feet sore.
I have not tried it on our animals, but the “miracle drug” I hear about is Adequan. I’ve seen many stories of dogs with arthritis and/or joint problems restored to puppylike mobility by a single shot of Adequan.
My 13-year old greyhound has osteoarthritis, both age related and also resulting from the pounding her body took after 3 years of racing. She’s maintaining fairly well on a combination of gabapentin for pain, an NSAID for inflammation, Dasequin and also once-a-month Adequan shots. The Adequan definitely improved her movement and pain levels.
That’s what the vet said about my pup as well. He is also taking some doggie advil and some expensive joint stuff. Two days in and it seems to be helping (he ran around a lot after we got home from work yesterday). We’ll see what he is like after our long weekend walk.