Angela, I'm sorry you're having such a time with unsoundness in your young Berner. I've responded to your questions within the text of your message below: ----- Original Message ----- From: "Angela Ewtushik" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: lameness
> My question is whether my situation is normal for a large dog, or should I > be concerned... ***Limping is not normal. Period. There's something wrong when a dog limps. What's wrong might not need attention to resolve itself. Or it may. What has your dog's breeder recommended as far as diagnostics and treatment? > I have a 20 month old male/neutered berner that has been plagued with on and off lameness for over a year now... He is large for the breed (120lbs, 281/2 inches) and came from large parents (100 and 140lbs). He is in VERY good condition and if anything a bit thin. I have him on large breed food (Eukanuba) and has been on Cortaflex (msm,glucosamine and chondroitin) since last october. We restrict him from unnecessary stairs in the house (to our bedroom!) and also trim the hair around his pads so he doesn't slip as much on the hardwood floors. And I have been told by "conformation" experts that his shoulder angulation is poor (too straight). ***In my observation rarely will an overly tall Berner have a well laid back shoulder. Often part of a super-tall dog's height is attained by straightening/opening the shoulder angle. Some dogs with too-straight shoulders are sound. However poor conformation may well contribute to untimely wear and tear, especially in the active dog. > > Here is a background: > Lameness (always front end) began last may and appeared worse after any exercise over a normal walk. We tried our best to keep him under control, but we live in the country, so once in a while he would go for a romp and run a bit faster than I would have liked to see. ***Your dog would have been approximately 7-8 months old then. That's a prime age to see panosteitis and/or the beginnings of OCD in the shoulder OR one or more of the three malformations which are labeled Elbow Dysplasia. It's also a time when puppies, in their exhuberance for life, WAY over-exert themselves in play and sometimes suffer soft tissue injuries. It's a VERY vulnerable time in a Berner puppy's development, especially in a jumbo size Berner puppy. It would come and go (growing pains?) to the point where I would second-guess myself, because I was looking for a limp! ***Been there. I've even been challenged to identify WHICH limb is unsound at times in a pup going through irregular/uneven growth stages. Don't feel alone! Come september he was bad again and we had him xrayed and neutered in october (hips/shoulders/elbows) and showed nothing wrong... we kept him on restricted exercise for over 2 months (quite difficult, but possible!) and by december he was fine (because of cortaflex or just time??) In March he injured himself in the deep snow (leg stopped, body kept going!) and injured the muscle, which got better after about 6 weeks. During this time I had also taken him to a chiropractor once in > awhile. > > Now this weekend, he started limping again (not the leg he injured in march)! So now I am back to trying to restrict his exercise... he didn't do anything out of the ordinary and I'm assuming it would not be panosteitis (growing pains) at this age...? Or maybe it's just another minor muscle injury that has not fully healed...? ***Are you feeding this dog ANYTHING besides the Eukanuba large breed food? Had you resumed training with liver treats or some other kind of food that does not "jive" with a low protein diet? When I suspect pano in a Berner, I lower protein intake or protein quality and find it resolves. In my experience, other lameness problems don't resolve with diet change. > Is this normal for a large breed?? Or have I got a problem dog? I plan to have full x-rays done again, but figured I might as well wait until he was 2 years old. ***The problem with diagnosing some ED at a young age is with conventional radiographs we must typically wait for degenerative changes to have occured to see them. They typcially have not advanced enough in the very young dog. A CT scan (expensive) can detect more at a young age. It's not something I do with my dogs but it is an option for earlier diagnosis. ***I had a dog with ED once. We could see degenerative changes on the rads we took in my vet's office. But a definitive dx for which elbow problem he had, we could not make. So I took him to a teaching hospital to get a definitive diagnosis for his breeder. The radiologist recommended a CT scan for $700 in order to diagnose the dog's specific ED problem. I declined and was ready to head home. He then suggested that instead of the CT scan I put the $700 toward an exploratory surgery where, if there was a correction that could be made, they'd go ahead and complete the elbow surgery while the dog was under anesthesia. I declined that too since my general policy on elbows is to leave them alone. Since I was not going to have the surgery done, doing the CT scan was a mute point. The dog lives like a king with a friend who does nothing special to treat the dog's ED and who does not note his unsoundness. He is 5 years old. This dog has a large yard and a runningmate, exercises hard and then comes in and becomes a couch potato! ***What is often NOT told to clients is that the expensive diagnostics for elbow problems often lead to inconclusive conclusions and that a follow up exploratory surgery is merited in the practitioner's view anyway. I have not yet been faced with a dog with ED in my program who didn't get through life pretty dandy without surgery. It's rarely my recommendation to go the surgery route. That's just been MY experience. I'm sure others have had very different experience. I find it is a fine line between proper exercise to condition the right muscles, but overdoing it and having a sore dog. I have him > involved in as much as he can handle physically (freestyle, rally-O, straight recalls over 2 flyball jumps to work on striding, started carting, some low impact agility (no A-frames or excessive jumping yet!). He is as smart as can be, but I have been very cautious to wait until he has fully matured physically (not yet!) ***The kind of exercise I prefer for a dog is free-running exercise where he/she is not encouraged to do any moves which might be disfavorable to him. Some of my dogs jump up on things and off them...just because it's fun to them. Others don't. The kind of things you're doing with your dog are WORK and I would not recommend WORK for an unsound dog.....free-exercise, yes, WORK, no. I define "work" in this sense as "directed commands" during exercise sessions. > I just wondered if this is a typical life of a large berner pup (not anymore!) or should I be preparing myself (& my bank account) for some possible surgery...? I have periodically taken him to the breeder, so she is aware of what we have gone through (and appears that she will live up to her guarantees...) If it is just poor conformation that causes the > soreness, what could the outcome be? ***You don't have a diagnosis yet, so I would not venture to guess the outcome. Dogs I've had who were unsound, were, of course, neutered. Those who did not respond to conventional rest and anti-inflammation therapy were turned out for free exercise after several months if they would run and play on four legs. The dogs from my program typically work out of their lameness with free-running exercise and perhaps glucosamine, vit C support. They would be unsound on occasion, especially after hard workouts, and resume soundness most of the time. Several of these dogs I've shared with friends over the years. They typically do not even note the dog's unsoundness in their daily lives. These dogs are placed in situations where not nearly as much is demanded of them physically nor prompted by competition with other dogs as is the case at my house. ***I've had three shoulder OCD dogs living with me over the years. These dogs became 3-legged lame (would not bear weight on the affected shoulder). All three of those dogs had surgery to remove the offensive cartilage lesion in their shoulders and all three resumed normal activities after a period of recuperation. > I feel that I have taken all the possible precautions, but he still has to be able to play like a young dog once in awhile... Is there anymore I can do? ***You have hit on the head a VERY big dilemna in dealing with lameness in a young dog. Sometimes the "necessary" confinement so terribly restricts the young dog's developement, I began to question its true value. This is a judgement we all have to make for ourselves and our own dogs. For my own dogs, I'm particularly wanting to determine if the lameness will respond to antiinflammatory therapy. If it does, it MAY (or may not) be a soft tissue injury. In such a case I will sometimes SEVERELY restrict exercise....no up and down a zillion times in the house (cagerest required) and NO time off leash outside. I might continue this for up to three weeks if I'm seeing progress on antiinflammatory therapy. Once I've given up on a dog's resuming soundness with rest, I turn him out in situations where he is not subjected to the physical abuses of other dogs. Typically he'll resume some semblance of periodic soundness with no drugs. > I am anticipating the worst, but if anyone has gone through any similar situations, I would like to hear what happened... Or is there any berner-L archives that I should read? ***there's probably a lot in the archives. I hope your pup's unsoundness resolves. Give him a kiss from me on top of what MUST be a BIG HEAD on such a BIG boy. **Good luck to you and your Berner. ***I'm curious. Are the mother and father of your puppy OFA or GDC certified free of ED? Ruth Reynolds Pioneer Bernese Greenwood, FL [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.jersey.net/~mountaindog/rar
