My puppy Aerith is 3 days shy of 6 months old. She was 6.7 lbs when we got her at 8 weeks old and is now around 40 LBs. Tuesday morning when we woke up, she was very very slow to get up, and then was limping on her back legs when she went outside to pee. We let our other dog outside at the same time and they usually play, the other dog bumped into her and Aerith fell over and was VERY slow to want to get back up. We called the vet and they asked us to bring her in. They did X-Rays (negative for Hip Dislocation/Dysplasia) and a radiograph (at THIS TIME negative for Pano) and prescribed an anti inflammatory and a pain med/sedative that we are to give her 1 of each every 12 hours. I know that pano gets easier to see on a radiograph as the days go by. Fast forward to this morning (only 2 days later), she is still extremely slow to get up, or won't do it at all. When she DOES stand, she either drags the entirety of her back legs, or as she tries to walk her toes curl under and she missteps and then falls into a side-sit and won't stand back up. Every once in a while if you kind of pretend to ignore her, she'll get up and walk very slowly and kind of lopsidedly out to do her business but this is rare. We've had to resort to puppy pads in her kennel so that we don't continuously have accidents. I am kind of freaking out, I know that pano can take some time to diagnose but do you all think that is what this could be? I can try to take video of her walking--or dragging next time we take her out, but please help salve my mind because in my head she has a degenerative condition.
Hi This sounds horrible and probably quite scary for you. If it was mine I would be asking for an emergency referral to a specialist. Keep us posted.
Thank you! We ended up taking her back to the vet and asking them to test neuro and spinal items. They ran Xrays and saw something between her L5 and L6, and sent bloodwork out that should be coming back today. The vet said she thinks it could be Diskosplodylitis (I think i spelled that right?) or possibly a tick-borne illness. Fingers crossed it is one of those... We have her on antibiotics, stopped her on the anti inflammatories and they added more pain medication and gave her a laser treatment on her spine. She's definitely more "here" after the two antibiotics... she is now upset she's in her kennel and is being a little bit more playful.
