Leo, bath and post bath
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Poor thing. What happened?
I guess several yrs ago she blew out her knee and our San Diego vet attributed it to her hips. We had been giving her glucosamine but once moving here it seemed to get progressively worse (probably a combination of her chasing squirrels and walking on ice). In fact it got so bad that she stopped putting weight on that leg. So we took her in to the Dr here and they said her hips were fine and the problem was that her knee had been blown out several yrs back and had now developed severe arthritis. The procedure they did involved sawing her leg in half and repositioning her tibia (crazy, huh?), that combined with pins and a stainless steel plate seems to be the way to fix such issues.
Interestingly, the Dr said the number of knee and joint issues has grown exponentially due in large part to the push for spaying/neutering at an early age. He used the analogy of how the beef industry neuters their cattle to produce tender beef and that early spaying/neutering of dogs has the side effect of weakening dogs tendons and joints. Back when they advised people to wait until 6 to 8 months before spaying, such knee issues were rare but now it's quickly becoming a major problem and is now the #1 surgery for dogs.
I guess several yrs ago she blew out her knee and our San Diego vet attributed it to her hips. We had been giving her glucosamine but once moving here it seemed to get progressively worse (probably a combination of her chasing squirrels and walking on ice). In fact it got so bad that she stopped putting weight on that leg. So we took her in to the Dr here and they said her hips were fine and the problem was that her knee had been blown out several yrs back and had now developed severe arthritis. The procedure they did involved sawing her leg in half and repositioning her tibia (crazy, huh?), that combined with pins and a stainless steel plate seems to be the way to fix such issues.
Interestingly, the Dr said the number of knee and joint issues has grown exponentially due in large part to the push for spaying/neutering at an early age. He used the analogy of how the beef industry neuters their cattle to produce tender beef and that early spaying/neutering of dogs has the side effect of weakening dogs tendons and joints. Back when they advised people to wait until 6 to 8 months before spaying, such knee issues were rare but now it's quickly becoming a major problem and is now the #1 surgery for dogs.
I am not sure how to reply to this ... But....
Our dog Charlie suffers from arthritis but I would not put him through this. He is 11 so that makes a difference.
I think the Vets (Dr) statement about early spaying is not proved. In the UK there is a trend for vets to make things appear far worse than they are to get you to spend money on unnecessary ops so you can claim on your pet insurance which is not good.
Please don't take this as a criticism it's just a different viewpoint.
I hope Penny is OK.