Help! My Lab is limping--but why?
How I (think) I discovered what is bothering Whiskey and what we can do about it
Owners of sporting dogs, especially the ones that double as “the family dog,” know the dilemma all too well.
Hip and joint and muscular injuries come with the territory of dogs that run full-tilt through the brush. Eventually something is wrong with your dog’s gait and you’re not sure what is the cause.
Is it arthritis? Surely not at just 6 years of age. Is there some pulled muscle or joint or tendon injury he’s hiding or compensating for? What if it’s the beginnings of hip dysplasia?
This is where I was, and am, with Whiskey. Today I’m starting a web and video log that the Whiskey Dog and I hope will be helpful to others who have athletic working dogs with a limp.
Yes, “we.”
I just asked Whiskey about it to be sure about sharing all his health information and he said nothing. I took that as tacit approval.
Whiskey’s joint and muscle issues date back to the time he was a pup and sometime I might just write a little history piece for folks to understand how that stuff relates to this log, but this episode starts on a pleasant day in early December 2020.
Whiskey was freshly recovered from a copperhead bite, nearly a year of COVID-19 pandemic quarantine with me and a tumultuous presidential election.
While tracking a wounded deer in November he was hit hard on the front left leg by a copperhead and he swelled up like a balloon. It sidelined him for about 10 days and for about another week he favored that front leg when it came to heavy cover.
With the snakebite recovery and the continuing election drama, he just needed a chance to get out. I took him out to my deer hunting area and let him “be a dog” while I moved a stand and cleaned up a shooting lane.
Mostly he stayed close but a neighbor’s pup showed up and they went off on a pretty good romp—but always within earshot. They played like puppies and made quite a ruckus. Late in the day I noticed a limp in his right rear leg—the same leg where, three years earlier, a blown ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) required TPLO surgery.
At first I suspected he picked up a thorn. The leg was tender when I rubbed him down but I saw no outward appearance of injury (no thorns, blood or cuts) so I put him in his kennel. When we returned home he started holding up that leg as he walked. His toes barely touched the ground.
It was pretty ugly. It was worrisome.
I put him on Rimadyl and limited or easy exercise for a few days and his “owie” seemed to clear up.
After his TPLO repair, a Tibial Plateau Leveling Osteotomy, which basically reconnects the leg with a steel L-shaped bracket, Whiskey’s right rear leg never looked identical in full stride to his left, but it regained it’s power and all was good until this past winter.
Through December I’d watch him run and that leg just appeared to “drag” as he ran. It went through the motions but it was not providing power.
Sometimes I thought I was psyching myself out just staring at it too much.
At a training day with the Tulsa Retriever Club in January I asked person after person, “does that right rear leg look right to you?” I’m sure I drove some people nuts with it.
We kept on with a normal winter duties. We tracked deer, we hunted ducks and quail. That leg would just get “stiff” but with rest it always seemed fine a day or two later.
Still something didn’t seem right. I started to notice that he “bunny hopped” with his hind legs, especially if he was rounding a corner.
After Whiskey participated in a European pheasant hunt and retrieved 52 birds in one day—and had one particularly stressful exit from a steep-banked muddy stream—he held that leg in the air again.
This time when I massaged him that evening I noticed a marked difference in his hind legs. The muscles of the left were “buff” and the right leg muscles had hard knots in them. Uncharacteristically, Whiskey “winced” when I massaged those knots.
I don’t know why I didn’t notice it before, but suddenly I figured out this leg was atrophied to the point he really had no “butt” on that side anymore and the right was buff as a Christmas ham.
His left rear leg has a scarred old partial tear to the ACL (that puppyhood injury mentioned earlier). With him compensating for the right leg and all that pressure on the left, I feared another ACL blowout.
I took him to his surgeon, Dr. Paul Dean, who literally knows that right rear leg inside and out. He did a set of X-Rays and examined Whiskey.
Mechanically, he said, the leg was fine and the TPLO was in great shape. He had a little arthritis forming and “very, very slight” dysplasia beginning to show in the hip. He gave me Rimadyl to give to Whiskey on days we would have a lot of work to make the recovery less painful and recommended keeping him on glucosamine supplements.
I went with that for a few weeks and compensated with exercise only on flat ground and with swimming for conditioning—lots and lots of swimming.
But his leg continued to deteriorate. He limped more and bunny hopped more after days that were not all that strenuous. Something was wrong. Google searches pointed me toward hip dysplasia.
A visit with his regular vet, Dr. Seth George, at River Trail Animal Hospital in Bixby, put us on the path we’re following now. George couldn’t find any injuries either, but referred me to Dr. Heather Owen at Animal Acupuncture in Tulsa. He also gave Whiskey what is said to be a better source of glucosamine/chondroitin supplement than the over-the-counter stuff for humans I’ve used for years.
Others of his patients had good luck with Animal Acupuncture, George said, and the sports medicine specialists had tools there he simply didn’t have to measure what was going on.
Several weeks later—due to their busy schedule and mine—Whiskey and I finally have an idea what’s up thanks to a stance pressure measurement, measurements of his muscle mass and flexibility, and some really cool digital thermography.
The diagnosis: “Whiskey presented with issues after TPLO and not using the leg.” The diagnosis states: “... this is consistent with stifle arthritis, right sartorious trigger point, patella tendinitis (desmitis) and stifle effusing (bilaterally).”
Basically means he’s running like an F-150 with bent frame and one really low tire that is on a wheel that has bad bearings to boot.
Why this seemed to suddenly show up is unknown right now, Owen said.
It could be that he injured himself running around that day and it exacerbated underlying problems. It also could be that it was just a long-term issue following his TPLO recovery.
“How quickly he recovers will tell us a lot,” she said.
However it happened, here we are.
Whiskey is a dog that is, essentially, out of balance. Now we face the tricky task of returning that balance, strengthening that leg and turning him back into a working dog before hunting season and—if we’re really lucky—a fall field trial.
That’s the goal.
And that is enough for Part I. In the next installment I’ll try to help folks understand that diagnosis and how Dr. Owen’s team plans to turn an out-of-balance dog back into a working dog.
Knowing Whiskey and knowing you, I feel so helpless and I am very sorry that Whiskey Dog is having these problems ganging up on him.