Kenz back to Matthew

I finished up work a little early yesterday and decided to make the most of the nice weather and take the girls for a long walk up Brownhill creek. Well we did our normal bit of playing around at the end of the track before coming home and that was where the nightmare started. Kenz took half a dozen paces and pulled up on three legs - putting no weight on her right hind. Here I was thinking what on earth has she done after all we have been through - my fears were either a cruciate or another luxating patella.

She has been having a few right hind episodes this last week so to say my stress levels skyrocketed was an understatement.

We walked home and I jumped on the phone and rang Matthew. Matthew suggested I had two options - one was to take her to my local vet or to make an appointment for her with him while it was somewhat "fresh".  I made the decision to take her back to see him today.

He had a chance to look at some video I sent through of an earlier episode from last weekend and his view is that it looked like a muscular cramping type problem.

Well things have not really changed after he has looked her over. He found some soreness and tenderness in that leg but nothing structurally wrong which would explain the 3 legged behavior. We both agreed she wasn't making things up. John's view on the video was that he wasn't sure what was going on either. Matthew has suggested it may be worth including a muscle type storage disease in her differential diagnoses. In which case there is suggestion that bloods may be taken, muscle testing and muscle biopsy aren't off the considerations.

The other devastating bit of information was that Matthew felt when Kenz was totally relaxed that her patella was luxating much more easily then he had ever found it to previously. Thats not a particularly hopeful or promising sign considering she was put through surgery and so far 18 weeks of rehab to help fix a relatively minor problem not end up just as bad or even worse then when we started. Matthew did feel that when Kenz was standing that it wasn't "as bad".  The only interesting news is at this stage Matthew didn't think he would be in any rush to put her back through surgery because we may not resolve her lameness issues (I guess thats because we don't have an explanation for her right hind lameness at this point).

At any rate Matthew was going to send an email to John this afternoon regarding what he had found so suggested I get back in touch with John early next week after giving him a few days to digest what Matthew has written.

As far as Kenz is concerned nothing really changes. Matthew didn't think I needed to cut back on her activity in anyway so other than not ramping things back up to full activity she is still allowed her free running, dog pool swimming and anything else that she wants to be doing.

Both girls enjoyed their run at the conservation park tonight and because I have been told to try and capture as many 3 legged episodes as I can I happened to luck in and capture an even rarer event - Ness deciding to have a zoomie game with her little baby sister.

Not bad for my old girl but its a bit sad when shortly after Ness continued to happily trot along ahead and Kenz was lagging behind not particularly happy about things.