Luxating Patellas

[Evanescence]

I was wondering if anyone had any insight or experience with patellar problems or surgery with their dogs...

I have an 18month old ACD mix who I know has some patellar luxation but my agility instructor who is a DVM looked her over and said they're not bad, like a 1-1.5 on the scale they use to assess them. She also advised me I should keep her in the best of shape, and that agility and frisbee would be the best things for her.

She's not in any obvious pain, and has only yelped and held her leg out about 4 times in her life so far, and I monitor her fairly closely, so I doubt its happened when I'm not around. I wouldn't be worried, but she was training to be an agility dog along with my other dog, and she absolutely loves it! She's also a crazy hyper cattle dog who needs some outlet for her energy, and I get tired of throwign a frisbee 1,000 times a day. Recently at agility practice she's been avoiding jumps. She's fairly well trained, and didn;t aviod them too much until they were at competition height for entire courses. She jumps 22" in training (USDAA reg. height) in my backyard often, but not for more than like 20 times a day. I entered her in competition for the first time this weekend, and I think I got her over 5 jumps total, out of like 30 she should have done. I even eliminated her from one class and ran her at 12" to see if she would run without the high jumps and she refused then too.

I know there's corrective surgery, but with a $2K price tag and a 6-8 month recovery time its scary.

Anyone have any advice, experience or anything on this?

Thanks

Lisa & the crazy dogs:

Alex - CGC, NAC, NGC, OJC, TN-N, TG-N
Cassie - AKA "knee issue dog"
Dooley - the best foster dog ever!!! (anyone want a new and awesome aussie?)

[Patch O' Pits]

If she isn't making the jump height my guess is she is in pain when she jumps that high. Dogs hide pain very well
You may want to look into other organizations that have different jump heights or don't put her in a jumpers class, but her in competitions with less jumping like the standard courses or tunnelers courses

you may also want to look into swimming therapy or underwater threadmills to build up her strength

Hope that helps

You may also want to look into the orthodogs yahoo group

[Evanescence]

Thanks for the advice, swimming is her favorite exercise, we go down to a pond near my house almost every night and I throw a frisbee out into the water which she loves to go fetch. She has HUGE leg muscles because she's constantly swimming and running and jumping to catch that silly frisbee. She's not knocking jumps, she just about always clears them when she jumps them but recently she's refusing to jump over jumps at all, she'll just run around them instead, and only go over when really insist. Now that I think something is wrong I won't insist she jump until we figure her out.

Well, I had her to the vet this morning, and the opinion I got from her is that the dog has no pallar luxation problem, so she's having x-rays of her hips back and knees taken under sedation tomorrow, my fingers are crossed that its just a pulled muscle or something, but I can't understand the yelping/holding leg out/limping without the patella luxating diagnosis...

Oh well, another medical mystery/adventure in crazy agility mut land...lol...my fingers are crossed!

[Evanescence]

I thought everyone might like to know what I found out finally was my dog Cassie’s issue. I brought her to my vet who checked her completely out, couldn’t find a problem with her, and had me get hip and knee x-rays done under sedation to double check that it wasn’t her hips or knees. After that she said the only thing she could offer was a short anti-inflammatory treatment in case it was a pulled muscle or something. I really didn’t think Cassie was in any pain and so I declined her offer and wanted to spend some more time training to see if it was just a lack of training or a lack of muscle tone and therefore fatigue on the agility course.

Our next agility lesson was stellar!!! She took every jump faster than I had ever seen her go, and she probably went over 40 or 50 20” jumps in the matter of 10 minutes. I can guide her with a soft word or slight shoulder movement, this dog is made for agility! I even ran her in Tunnelers and Touch N’Go at our NADAC trial last weekend and she was awesome! Then on Monday I brought her to class and we were back to avoiding jumps. She doesn’t flat out refuse them, just runs around them when ever she thinks she can get out of it.

I consulted with the behaviorist who has a DVM at my Tuesday night class and she referred me to an orthopedic specialist. We had our appointment at 9:30am this morning and he took one look at her and knew exactly what was wrong. She has something called Osgood-Schlatter’s disease, which is more commonly seen in human athletes ages 10-15 but is the same in a dog. It’s caused by a dislocation of a small fibular growth plate which rises abnormally high. If caught immediately it can be surgically pinned and problem solved. If not caught immediately, like in my dog, it heals slightly higher than it should be, which also raises the patella and prevents complete extension of the leg.

The vet said she’s not in any pain, she just feels funny or uncomfortable when she jumps because it’s hard to get enough power to go over the jumps without being able to extend her legs. He suggested training her to pull weight to strengthen her hindquarters and make it less of an effort to jump so she wouldn’t need to fully extend her legs. He also said that since she’s so small and light (a 20 inch 33 pound border collie ACD mix) with a bit of strength training she could continue her agility career!

So, all in all, I’m very happy and relieved to know what’s wrong, and can be fixed my being dragged around on a few walks a week, and maybe dragging a tire around in the back yard!!

Anyone else have experience with this problem or experience in training to pull? I’d love any advice I can get!!

Lisa

[ClarkFarm]

Hmm I find this really interesting. My sil has a large mixed breed dog that her veterinarian diagnosed with a luxating patella. She was told just to give her dog aspirin and if she blows out her knee, then surgery would be done. That vet didn't offer any alternative until surgery was actually needed.

I am glad to hear your dog is doing better!