Misadventures

We moved back into the house we own in March of this year. Almost immediately, Kansas was up to her old "tricks" again, stalking the backyard squirrel. She lies in wait at one corner of the fence or the other, waiting for him to appear. When he does, she takes great leaps at the fence corner, trying to reach him. Eventually, he will attempt a mad dash across the telephone line which spans the width of the yard. I really hate this, both the squirrel AND the telephone line; I want the squirrel shot and the line moved somehow.

What happens next is, Kansas follows the squirrel- hopping, on her hind legs, all the way across the yard, directly under the telephone line, jumping as high as she can.

Should the squirrel pause part-way across, she turns her attention back to the fence nearest him, getting a running start and vaulting off the vertical surface of the fence.

The first year that we lived here, she missed her footing on the landing, and fell hard on her side.

She did that more than once.

We know she has a broken rib on her left side, from such incidents.

She experienced a third fall when we lived in the rental house in 2008.

Mercifully, 2009 had us living in an apartment, where she got lots of rest and kept still, other than structured long walks.

This year, DH and I have both seen her leap up at the fence and grab hold of the top of it, hanging there by her front paws until she slips and lets go.

She doesn't always land on her feet then, either.

Three times this year she has strained or injured herself badly enough that it hurts her to walk after these wild antics. The dogs aren't outside alone, one or both of us always goes out with them, or at least watches them from a door or window. We've had to start reminding her to stop when she gets going like that, or chase after her and MAKE her stop, because she won't limit herself. She won't be careful with herself.

It's funny that, in her brief life (she's only 6 and one-half years old), she has learned that too much of certain activities hurts her. She will only fetch a ball or toy about 3 times, before she decides that's enough and turns her attention elsewhere. I always figured it was her prey drive, that she was so obsessed with the possibility of the squirrel that her attention didn't stay on me -or anything else- for long. You are supposed to be able to build on this prey drive, which I tried to do with Frisbee, but she's happiest catching the disc, then running off to chew it up. This is typical in the disc dog community and can be trained away, but, as with fetch, she loses interest after about 3 tosses. After reading discussions between many disc-doggers who have had dogs with injuries, I decided to follow Kansas' lead and consider that perhaps she was stopping because she was hurting, rather than for the other reasons.

Two years ago, she stopped getting into vehicles on her own. This happened to coincide with the sale of my own vehicle, and our resignation to driving a vehicle we didn't want to drive and my parents always figured that Kansas didn't want to get into the car because I resented the car. It wasn't the car that she and I had always ridden in together for as long as she has been mine. Earlier this year, DH and I took her out to DH's other vehicle, to try and work with her on getting in/out of it, because she used to jump up into the back seat of that vehicle quite readily, but had been hesitating or trying to climb inside, instead. I even got inside the SUV, took her leash and called to her. We could tell she WANTED to comply but wasn't able to.

We had since then assumed that she DID have some sort of weakness or injury. We just didn't know what. Most of the time she'd be fine, but every once in a while she'd "overdo it" outside and would be stiff and slow-moving for a day. Rest always cured this.

Last Friday morning, the dogs and I were outside. I was straightening up the cucumber vines clinging to the fence and Kansas began her two-legged squirrel pogo across the backyard. I didn't take the time to stop and correct her, as I normally would. But she seemed fine the rest of the day.

That afternoon, I had to leave to run what would have been a quick errand. It ended up taking an hour, and while I was gone, a UPS delivery I was expecting arrived. The one day that UPS actually comes early, rather than late. Around here, you're lucky if your package arrives by 5:00. Usually it's more like 7:00. This time it was 2:30. I returned home and there was a package on the porch.

Kansas tends to wait directly in front of the front door whenever I am away. Leo sleeps wherever, but when Kansas alerts to the sound of heavy machinery passing by, he will get up and run across the living room to join her in barking at the door- whether someone is actually at OUR house or not.

We have been in the process of laying tile in the living and dining rooms. The tile isn't slick, but it doesn't provide the same texture & traction as the concrete slab we've become accustomed to living with these past 5 months.

Leo weighs 81lbs, and he's never really figured out how to put on the brakes once he gets going.

I entered the house, and what little furnishings we have, which are piled in odd places due to the tile project, had been knocked askew. The blinds covering the front window had been pulled down. The dogs both greeted me, prancing, tails wagging. I didn't pay them much attention because I was processing the mess.

When I'm home, I keep them away from the front door when noisy vehicles are passing by. They have both been trained to stop before they even reach the foyer. If someone comes to the door, the dogs know to move away from the door and be quiet before I even answer it. I guess they continue this when I'm not present.

I went to the kitchen and prepared their afternoon meal, then they laid down in their usual places and I sat down to watch some TV. 30 minutes later, I roused them to take them out.

Kansas wouldn't get up.

I tried again. She got up, took a few shaky steps out the door, and laid down. I got her up again, she made it to the edge of the patio, then lay down in the grass. I got her up again, and by this time she moved a bit better, but her hind legs were shaking and she was whining. She managed to relieve herself, walked about a bit, and was uncharacteristically ready to go back indoors. She went to lie on her pillow, and there she stayed. She wouldn't get up at all when DH arrived home an hour later. When she did finally make it to a standing position, and hobble to him, she whined constantly.

We spent some time manipulating various limbs, trying to determine the nature of her injury and whether it was the same old one or a new one. It seemed to be her right leg that was affected, though in the past it has been her left hip that bothers her. We discussed whether it was something that happened outside that morning, or if she had found herself in the path of Leo the Juggernaut during the UPS delivery and been hurt at that time.

We decided to allow her to rest all weekend, and made an appointment with a local vet for Monday.

She lay on her pillow all day Saturday and all day Sunday, not even keeping her usual vigil at the back door where she could monitor the yard. She made no protest when both Saturday and Sunday morning came and I didn't take the dogs out for their usual walk. Normally, if we skipped our walk due to rain, she would remind me constantly, letting me know all day that we had varied from routine and I had forgotten something. Not so, in this case.

Monday I got up early so that I could walk Leo, who was becoming restless and fidgety, while Kansas stayed home with DH before he left for work. DH reported that she paced from door to door, whining, upset that I had gone without her. She repeated these same actions on Tuesday when Leo and I again went out for a walk without her.

Monday afternoon we had our appointment with the vet. This was our first time seeing a new vet at a clinic other than the one we've been customers of for the past 10 years. The vet was very good and I am pleased with her. Everyone on staff at the clinic was great about taking their time, allowing Kansas to get to know them. They even allowed us to hold her while they performed their various tasks in the exam room in our presence, rather than taking her to the back, out of our sight. The vet was very thorough in her exam, manipulating Kansas' hips and knees, noting that the knees and legs did not seem to pain her but that her hips certainly did. They also took a blood sample, something we were going to do at her next annual visit, anyway, as she is approaching senior status and we wanted to have a starting point for reference if any problems arose in the future. The blood tests showed that her kidney and liver function is good, that she is healthy. The vet complimented us on her healthy physical appearance, as well as her behavior. We had made the appointment with the intent of taking some X-rays, but as she would have to be sedated and the vet wouldn't prescribe a sedative without seeing her first since she was a new patient, and because she had been fed already that day because nobody told us to withhold food and water, we weren't able to do so.

Tuesday morning, I took Kansas back for the X-rays. She got to see the same people she had met the day before, and I held her still while they injected her with the sedative, then waited while she went to the back for her procedure.

When the vet came back to get me, she was pleased with the results and with her ability to really maneuver Kansas' limbs. Her knees are ok, the collateral ligaments of both (on the sides) are a little more lax than they should be, and the vet could get more rotation in those joints than she expected to, as a result, but that's not bad.

My baby has hip dysplasia. Not the worst they've seen, but she has it. The X-rays are rather shocking. The hip is a ball-and-socket joint, but Kansas' femurs have NO ball and her hips have very little socket. The right side is worse than the left, and both sides show the rough edges of bone-on-bone contact.

This explains why somewhere around the age of 3 or 4, she stopped doing those things: fetching balls, playing Frisbee, getting into the car on her own... It's also why sometimes she hurts after going crazy over squirrels in the backyard.

It's sad, depressing, a bummer... all of those things. But it's also something she's always had. The only difference is that now we know she has it, instead of suspecting it. Either you're born with it, or you're not. I knew when I made the decision to take her as a puppy that she might have it. It's a chance you take. There really are no guarantees, even in cases of careful testing and breeding. If both parents carry the gene, it could very well happen. Kansas is still Kansas. She hasn't changed. Life with hip dysplasia is the only life she's ever known. She doesn't know what it's like to NOT experience pain from normal activities. She hasn't had a sudden, marked change in personality. Her quality of life hasn't diminished. She's still doing everything she's ever done and loved to do. After resting all weekend and being in less and less pain, she was her old self on Monday, except for a noticeable hesitation when she would walk, and the fact that she would run but if you looked closely you could see that her right foot never touched the ground, though she didn't hold it up and make it obvious. On Tuesday she was putting her full weight on the leg again, finally, when walking AND standing.

Surgery isn't an option. I'd made that decision before we even knew what was wrong. I was not going to put her through something so invasive, nor have her "suffer" the agony of resting and being still during recovery. She's not a candidate, anyway. The condition hasn't progressed to that point, and except for the discomfort, the arthritis, the pain, it probably won't. What we do now is manage and monitor, making the necessary dietary adjustments to support her joints. She's been on a glucosamine supplement since March, anyway. I started her on that after the very first incident. I would have done it in a year, anyway, because of her age and as a preventative measure. This week we upped the dosage of that, and we have added a fish oil supplement, as Omega3s and 6s are also good for joint health. I could have done that long ago, when I read about every disc-dogger I know supplementing their dogs with it. But their dogs were athletes, performing feats that definitely needed and required such supplementation, and my dog was just a dog, just a pet. I remember reading about it every time one of them would get yet another new puppy, another new prospect for the sport. They started them on fish oil and glucosamine from day 1.

I still read about those people and their dogs, with wistful envy. I had hoped to be one of them. Recently I had even undertaken a search for a third dog, a heeler pup, because it had always been the plan and because it was past time. We were finally back in our house, with room for one more. It was my turn to get a dog. Kansas loves puppies and would definitely love a new pal. Leo is so big now that playing with him anymore is hard on her. He's too big and too heavy and she just doesn't enjoy it. She gets such a kick out of dogs her own size, dogs she can relate to more. I was also hoping it would distract her from the squirrel, give her something else to focus on.

I found several pups I was interested in, but at every turn DH said "Are you sure? Are you sure that's what you want?" or "I'm about to go back to work and I won't be here to help you..." (like he ever was before...) I was prepared for it financially and otherwise, but at the moment I'm discouraged and disappointed by his behavior. And now... I just don't know... I still want to. Nothing's changed. Kansas is still Kansas and the same considerations still apply. The main thing now is that I, with this new knowledge of her "condition", don't treat her any differently. I have to be consistent and be the me I've always been, rather than feeling sorry for her, or being sad for her. She knows nothing of any change. Nothing HAS changed. We're just aware now of something that was previously an unknown.

Kansas, Leo and I walked this morning. She was so excited she pulled the entire time, dragging Leo and me the whole way.