Limping - Osteochondritis Dissecans (OCD)

On one afternoon while at a dog park with Henley I noticed as he was running that he was slightly favouring one front leg. It wasn’t immediately clear which of the two front legs had the issue but as it wasn’t overly affecting him I decided to keep an eye on it. A couple of days later on a separate outing to another park he jumped up onto a park bench seat and as puppies do got distracted and propelled himself off the seat. The problem was he had one leg dangling down in between two of the slats of timber of the seat. Yelping ensued and he was quickly extracted from his predicament but from then onwards the limping was more prominent. Henley is also more of an intense wrestling puppy with his close canine friends and as I like to put it he’s great at running, he just hasn’t got the stopping down pat yet. He used to run full pelt and army roll when he got close to his puppy friends. Quite a few times I and the owners of the other dogs would wince and say “that has to hurt, right?” To try and slow him down I separated him and distracted him with some training or walked him around to the other side of the park. But the minute he was let loose he was back at it. 

Needless to say a visit to our local vet was done. Henley ever the troublemaker bounced around like a typical jack in the box Vizsla pup and you couldn’t tell he had an injury at all. Luckily I filmed his limping at home and showed the vet.

After examining Henley's front left shoulder (which he yelped when the joint was felt and moved) and an x-ray was taken our veterinarian diagnosed Henley with Osteochondritis Dissecans aka OCD. You as I when I first heard of it had no clue what OCD is and how it affects the joint. One of the best short and concise descriptions can be found on Peak Vetrinary Referral Center's website:

"OCD (osteochondrosis dessicans) is probably the leading cause of osteoarthritis of the shoulder joint. Shoulder OCD occurs when a piece of cartilage separates from the underlying bone. Pain is due to inflammation of the joint and exposure of nerves in the bone under the cartilage flap" (accessed online 15 Aug 2014 http://www.peakveterinaryreferral.com/specialty-services/surgery/shoulder-ocd/)

We think that Henley's rapid growth in combination with him injuring the shoulder has led to the development of OCD in his shoulder. However as it was caught extremely early on we decided to see how some injections of a combination of anti-inflammatory, artificial cartilage and aids in the lubrication of the injured joint. The Synovan injections were taken weekly for four weeks and with rest Henley went from being quite lame to walking normally. However it is now a couple of months since his diagnosis and he has gone back to limping. So on advice from our vet the next step is an operation to remove the flap of cartilage. A vast majority of dogs with OCD recover the best after having the cartilage flap surgically removed. Until he has the surgery (which I am busily saving for!) he is on rest and relaxation. Short easy walks are a must though for both his and the families sanity.
However as I have mentioned its hard to keep a Vizsla quiet as you can see in this video of him doing rounders/ zooms:

Excuse the ending he isn't the best at stopping and the reaction you hear at the end is from  my mum watching Henley using her orchids as brakes to stop himself from slamming into the outside wall of the house.

Has anyone had any experience with OCD (osteochondrosis dessicans) and their dog? It often occurs in large breeds but I've been told that it can occur quite frequently in Border Collies and Brittany Spaniels. 

A Dinosaur pet store and a neighbour drops by

Today's weather has been all over the place. Raining one minute sun shining the next it really didn't make up its mind to be a rainy day till after lunch. A week ago I visited a large pet store located in Kellyville and bought up a storm. Today I went back to return a mattress I had bought because I knew Henley would only destroy if I gave it to him. His bed is currently on rotation depending on his mood. If destructo Henley rears its ugly head the bed gets put out of his reach and later in the afternoon when gentleman Henley returns so does his cushioned bed. While super crazy and destructo Henley is around his bed can suffer multiple holes in a matter of minutes (it feels like in seconds though). So now his bed that is chew resistant has succumbed to Henley's piranha like teeth.

One of the dinosaur statues

But back to the pet store, it is huge! And its parking lot is guarded by dinosaurs, yes dinosaurs. These large dinosaur statues are a big hit with children (and adults too!) who visit the store with their families. This pet store is HUGE! And is quote a dangerous place to visit when you have money in your wallet or a credit card on the handy.

Hello Mindy, what are you doing here?

After arriving home to Henley we spent some time doing some more clicker training and having some snuggles (Vizsla's love their snuggle time). Henley abruptly raced to the glass door and with his hair raised down his back he let out his untruer alert deep barks. Looking out at the driveway I could see a little black curly-haired dog. It was Mindy the miniature Schnauzer who lives two doors down from us. She had managed to escape from her yard and made her way to our house and of course Henley. 

Mindy has escaped her yard once or twice before and I have taken her back but today her humans weren't home and so after letting her into her backyard and closing the gate three times her reappearance at our gate meant that she would be here till her people came home. I let her and Henley meet each other through the gate. They both were very excited to meet each other and were initiating play.

When I brought Mindy inside as she was already drenched from the on and off rain I towel dried her and let her have a play with Henley. Henley gets to the extreme high adrenaline phase quite easily and its during this that he fails to remember his manners. So when I saw that Mindy needed some space I separated them for a breather. Henley was sadly not very gentlemanly and started excitably yelling at her, but she took it all on her stride and ignored the behaviour she didn't like. He was a little slow on the uptake but eventually he realised that she paid him more attention and was more welcoming when he laid down opposite her and stopped loudly barking in her face.

When Mindy's human arrived home from work and came to collect her Henley was sad to see her leave and somehow I think that if she manages another great escape Henley will be first on her visiting list.

Emergency vet visits and getting KO'd by my dog

For the last couple of nights Henley has been very unsettled and when he is upset he makes sure everyone knows about it. At first we ignored his barking but noticing that he could get comfortable and was continually pacing I had a look over him. He appeared fine until I felt his stomach, I had barely brushed it and he yelped and flinched away from my touch. In the back of my mind that two of his brothers had stomach related illnesses (one blockage and one highly inflamed stomach) I sat with him to see if he could settle at all. After asking to be let out to do his business (no troubles there) I turned back inside and washed my hands. Paws padding into the kitchen I looked down to Henley and immediately called my dad. one of Henley’s eyes was fully dilated and the other not dilated at all. It wash;t like that a minute ago so I knew soothing was quite wrong with him.

Calling my local vet they put me onto SASH the Small Animal Specialist Hospital who we had visited multiple times previously with my sisters injured cat Skitz, a stray tortoiseshell cat that turned up in our front yard looking for love and food and multiple injured native animals that I had saved and they took in. Ringing ahead they asked me to think of any possible things like plants or chemicals that he might have gotten into or whether we had changed cleaning products recently that may be causing an allergic reaction. Racking my brain on the way to the vet of what he might have gotten into I couldn’t think of anything. On arrival Henley went from the woe is me Henley at home to a new place? New people? instant excitable puppy Henley came out. From his behaviour you wouldn’t think he had a thing wrong with him, but the minute you looked into his eyes you could see he wasn’t right. They took him out back to run tests and examine him while I nervously filled out some forms. I have to say I have never been so nervous or worried in my life, how do parents ever go through this with their children? Henley is my furbaby and by the time the vet came out (after sitting and waiting 45 minutes) I was a nervous wreck. 

The veterinarian was quite perplexed by Henley’s condition. His stomach was very tender but the x-ray showed no blockage or obstruction. And his eye condition didn’t seem to be connected to what the vet estimated as being toxicity poisoning. I did remember that early in the day during one of his crazy Vizsla puppy moments propelled himself into the corner of our timber eating bar, but had continued on playing like nothing had happened. So the veterinarian suspected toxicity and a possible concussion and wanted to put him on iv fluids to flush out toxins and keep him hydrated, closely monitor him overnight and have their ophthalmologist (eye specialist) take a look at him in the morning. After telling me another vet would call me in the morning with his update and when I could pick him up I made my way back to the car (after putting down a rather large deposit for Henley’s treatment). Knowing that he was in the best care possible I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

The call in the morning came letting me know that his eye had returned to normal and had been examined by the ophthalmologist and appeared normal and healthy. His stomach was no longer tender and he had scoffed down the breakfast he was offered. Their best guess was toxicity and to try and keep a close eye on him for the next couple of days, feed him a bland diet for the next week and keep him quiet. I looked at the lovely vet when she said to try and keep him quiet and she quickly said “oh he’s a Hungarian Vizsla, well as quite as you possibly can.” Keeping a Hungarian Vizsla quiet is like asking the sun to stop shining or the moon to stop glowing the word quiet and Vizsla don’t just don’t normally belong in the same sentence.

Taking a rest on his favourite blanket.

Henley has well and truly recovered from his mystery illness that occurred back in July and it was only a week later that as I bent down to pick something off the floor that he reared up on his hind legs (like a pony) and head butted me in the head. Needless to say I woke up on the floor seeing stars with a very worried Henley fussing and licking me. Jeez I knew he had a hard head but it was more like hitting titanium than a bone skull. So yes I have been embarrassingly knocked out cold by my dog, at the time it wasn’t funny as an instant migraine developed but looking back on it all I can do is laugh about it.

Have any of your dogs accidentally injured you?