First Acupuncture Session

Last night was the first night in a while where she has happily raced up the stairs at bedtime. This morning she found a red kiddie ball at the park and was happily herding it to her hearts content.

It was then home for a bath and off for a trip to Matthew for Kenz's first acupuncture session.

Matthew is still fairly adamant that its not the knee causing the issues but the fact her back is roached fairly badly. Coupled with my observations that things improved when she was on anti-inflams back in October last year he feels this further supports that conclusion. 

Poor girl had lots of needles stuck in her and looked a little like a pin cushion. We were a little to complacent because she was laying there quite patiently until he got to sticking the ones in her spine and she reacted badly and managed to move all the rest so he had to start again with her standing up.

She was a good girl after this though and lay down without causing any further issues once he had all the needles in place. 

As far as what Kenz is allowed to do this week Matthew placed no real restrictions as he feels by the sounds of it she is moderating herself to some extent. If she wants a walk she can have one, obviously no forced high level activity or training but she is allowed to have moderate exercise within reason.

She is back to him next Wednesday for more needles and to see how she is getting on.

Fingers crossed we see some improvement.

Three Options

So Matthew said to see how she got on over this last week and let him know how she was getting on. She had a fairly horrible looking weekend. She was a bit of a mess and that included some definite front right lameness. She is still having issues with stairs and is still randomly sitting down and having issues with mostly the left hind leg.

The situation at the moment is that he is fairly certain she may well have a lower lumbar spinal condition. 

The verdict was one of three options: 1. x-rays, 2. MRI or 3. treatment trial of acupuncture. Option 3 will require a minimum of three appointments over the course of three weeks. 

I don't think I have many options other than to opt for trialling acupuncture with her and seeing if that improves things. Poor little girl this has certainly turned into a prolonged saga. I am still hopeful she can get back to obedience but I guess we will have to see. 

In between her lameness episodes over the weekend she did have a nice time up the river going swimming twice a day and then playing on the oval to dry off. 

Matthew's latest verdict

Kenz went back to see Matthew yesterday as I wanted to get his view on where things were heading. She has had a few very serious lameness episodes over the last fortnight including as recent as Monday evening.

Well the good news is that Kenz's right shoulder now feels 100%. Glad to see some part of her isn't broken.

We are still none the wiser over the RH 3 legging business.

Matthew felt that his best guess as to why the LH issues still was that she may be showing discomfort to the internal sutures used. John however said he used 100% dissolvable sutures and at 7-8 months post-op they should be fully dissolved now so he didn't think that was likely. Matthew did say that her LH patella is still luxating somewhat but that he didn't think going in and doing further surgery to stabilise it will fix anything more now.

Her back is also starting to show signs of roaching and there is likely things going on in her lower throacic spine but he didn't think an MRI was going to change the end diagnosis or how we continue to manage her so didn't think it was necessarily warranted. 

She is also super tight through her hip extensors.

So we are back to really playing wait and see.  He wants to see if she can remain issue free for a week or so based on what he did yesterday and if she has any more 3 legged episodes then I am to stretch her out and see if that resolves things at the time.

At the moment we are to continue on as we have been and if things look to be resolving then maybe looking at acupuncture to help keep things settled over the longer term.

The verdict is that I will have to look after her left knee for the remainder of her life and therefore agility is totally off the future plans :(. Still hoping she can get back to obedience or at least some training as that is what she really loves to do.

In the meantime we will stick to walks at the beach, swimming and free running at the park and just continue to monitor things and hope for a bit of luck.