Lola's Limp

It’s been awhile since I’ve written .Life got busy and life got boring. That was until a few months ago.  The weather got nice and I began enjoy taking the dog on walks. And that’s when the limp started. I decided to blog our experience. One, as a way to get it out of my system. Two, get it online and maybe help someone else. Three, to not annoy my Facebook friends as much J.

Now I’m not sure if the walk is what caused it, or maybe just began to show us more signs. But there was no doubt about it, Lola was limping.  It started the night after a walk. She came off the couch while we had a friend over and was walking oddly on her back leg. As Josh put it, it was almost like her leg had fallen asleep. Being a Saturday night there wasn’t much we could do but keep an eye on her. Sunday rolled around the odd walk turned into a limp. Not just any limp though. She would go from doing her best to not even use the back leg and the next second she was standing up on both her back legs “dancing” for a treat. We were a bit baffled but figured it was hurt from the walk so we looked over the leg, checked the paw, pushed, pulled, and poked and she didn’t do anything but limp. By the end of the week she seemed to be using the leg a bit more but was still babying it so it was time for the vet. Our normal vet was busy so we took an appointment with the vet that first saw her as a puppy. He poked, pulled, and pushed and we didn’t get a single yelp, bark, growl, or snap from Lola. He checked the ACL, he checked the knee cap, and he checked this and that and narrowed it down to a sore muscle. He sent us home with some pills to help with it and prescribed some rest.

Lola quickly bounced back. After 5 days on the pills she was running around the house acting like nothing had ever happened. Not being a huge fan of putting my pups on pills and having experienced Lola feeling better sooner than expected before I pulled her off the meds. Slowly it became evident the something was still bothering her. Once again it was time for a vet appointment. Once again Lola’s leg poked, pushed, and pulled without a yelp, bark, cry, or bite. He rechecked the things the first vet looked over and couldn’t pinpoint the problem. He suggested to keep an eye on it and rest and to bring her back if things didn’t get better and we may need to X-Ray.

So we headed home. I watched as the leg would seem like it bothered her and the next minute she would act fine. I debated it things where in my head, maybe it was a sore muscle and I was blowing things out of proportion. It was small things. She would kick her leg out when sitting or laying down, you would watch her try to climb around the couch and struggle to make jumps she use to make. Occasionally she would lift a leg up a little tiny bit when going potty. Even her walk had this little sway to it. One thing I noticed was her level of energy seemed to drop, more so on the days it seemed to bug her more than the others. I think anyone else wouldn’t have noticed the walk, but I did. After not feeling confident that things were getting better we ran back to the vet. Once again he poked, pushed, pulled and she gave no yelp, bark, cry, or bite. Everything was feeling fine and in place. The vet was leaning towards it being a hip issue such as hip deterioration but was unsure of doing an X-Ray. The problem was, she wasn’t letting us know what was bothering her. The vet wouldn’t really know what to look for and we risked it being too early in the stages of hip deterioration for him to catch anything on the X-Ray. We opted to not X-ray, not wanting to risk spending money on no answers. Since the pills she had been on before seemed to make her feel a bit better he sent us home with some more pills and more rest.

This time I followed directions to a T and we spent ten days on the meds and even a few extra days using up the last of what we had been given the first time. After a couple days on the pills you would have thought we had a puppy in our house! Lola was running around the house, chasing Graham, and playing her fav game of bite your pants while you’re trying to walk. After a few days of the pills we watched her slowly start to baby the leg. Babying the leg turned in her once again having lower energy and she got a LOT more cuddling this time. Not just the sweet dog cuddles, but the “I don’t feel good” cuddles. You couldn’t sit or lay down without her being attached to you. I called the vet and was told to not feed her before coming in, it was time for X-rays. I’m one of those crazy people that talks to their dogs and I just kept telling Lola “you just need to tell us where it hurts, we just need to know where it hurts, please just let us know”.

I went to the vet Saturday hoping for the best but expecting something to happen. Worse case was the X-rays wouldn’t give us any answers. I didn’t want hip deterioration but I also wanted an answer so we could start making her feel better. So we head into the vet and this time a pull got a yelp. I think we all let out a bit of a gasp because she was finally telling us something was wrong! The vet simply put it “The good news, we don’t need to do X-rays today. The bad news, she’s going to need surgery.” Lola had torn her ACL.

As the vet explained it to me, it started as a mini rip. Something small enough to bother her, but not big enough to let us know just what. I guess the only way to catch the little mini rips is to do an MRI. At some point between the last visit and the one before the ACL had finally torn and was causing her enough pain to let us know. I listened somewhat to what the surgery will be but to be honest, I was in a bit of a haze. My baby needs surgery. She is going in tomorrow morning between 8am and 9am and will probably be having the surgery around 10am-10:30am. At this point they will clear out her knee and place band in the area to help it heal. Over time the band will disintegrate leaving her leg and knee to become bone on bone. We are looking at two months recovery time and if all goes well she will regain 90% of function in the leg. The vet pointed out that even at 90% he would have trouble knowing anything was wrong, we just might see some limping on rainy days.

The worst few days Lola has been limping worse than before. My heart breaks to see her in pain. I wish so badly I could explain to her that although tomorrow will suck, it’ll make her better in the long run. I’m nervous and scared for tomorrow and know I will be a wreck all day at work until I can leave to pick her up. I also worry about Graham. His playmate is going to be out of commission for some time and I’m not sure how he might handle the attention being direct at Lola and not him as much. I’m not only worried about the surgery but also the recovery. So tonight we are spending lot of time cuddling and tomorrow we will began to take each day one step at a time.

Lola sitting with her leg kicked out.