Thursday, July 21, 2011

What The Hell Is Wrong With Kate, Part 2

Don't know yet.

First step:  fluid check.

All her blood work was good.  No apparent kidney or liver weirdness.  Thyroid fine.  Peepee fine.

Next step: X-rays on Monday. 

I have to drop her off in case they need to sedate her.  Although, the vet said they may not need to since "she's so good." 

"So good" means that when Kate is nervous she gets all stiff.  She's just like a Gumby doll. 
(Dating myself?) 
You can really just move her limbs where you want them and she stays there.  Yes, of course, it's horrible, awful when dogs are scared, yet, at the same time, kinda funny.

She continues to be completely normal otherwise.  Well, "normal" if normal is back end like a dog and front end like a coat rack.

Here's for hoping for continued this...

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And a little bit of this...

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And lots of this...

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8 comments:

  1. I had a Gumby! And his horse - Pokey?

    Hoping you get some answers on Kate soon....

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  2. Normally, localized muscle loss would spell some kind of injury to me (E.g. busted ACL results in muscle loss in that leg, etc.).

    Metabolic or systemic issues would present through the entire body, to my understanding.

    Does she still weigh about the same? Does her gait looks the same? Is it both shoulders equally?

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  3. "Does she still weigh about the same? Does her gait looks the same? Is it both shoulders equally?"

    She does still weight the same. Gained back in the past month, but not in her front end - she just has chubby ribs now. :)

    The loss is symmetrical and her gait looks the same to me.

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  4. It is very important for your dogs to have these workouts because it is good for their body system. It is part of their training as well. It will be good to do even once a week.

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  5. Sounds a bit similar to what I had going on with my girl. Long story short...fall from the dog-walk coupled with rough housing with her favorite puppy a few days later caused off and on mild lamness that really looked more like stiffness in her left front. She lost some of her defined shoulder muscle in 8 short weeks. Stiffness would come and go, but there would be time between it, vet declared it a "soft tissue injury", rest, anti-inflammatories, blah, blah, blah. Nope, didn't help, always came back and we'd just start over. Plus add her defined muscle loss...which at the time I partly attributed to all the down time she was ending up with. Nothing on x-rays, so I went to a PT...she felt it was an instable shoulder injury...all on the underside of the shoulder. Took some special, and difficult, probing, but she clearly hurt on just one side. It's kind of the dog equivalent to a rotator cuff injury. So, she is in hobbles and has lots of strengthing exercises. She's looking great already and no sign of stiffness or mild lameness since we started. Just a thought and something to look for...

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  6. Aw :( Hoping all is figured out sooner rather than later! Crossed paws for Kate!

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  7. It seems like there can be a whole bunch of reasons for front end muscle wasting, some of them injury related, some of them not (the tumble might be to blame or might be a coincidence).

    Reasons for muscle wasting in shoulder area:
    1) Early motor neuron disease
    2) Intramedullary tumors
    3) Vascular lesions of spinal cord
    4) Intervertebral disk prolapse
    5) Ankylosing spondylitis
    6) Diabetes mellitus
    7) Thyroid disorders
    8) Toxins; Lead, Mercury
    9) Brachial neuritis (neuralgic amyotrophy)
    10) Familial brachial plexopathy
    11) Vasculitis
    12) Idiopathic lumbosacral plexopathy

    Muscle wasting in shoulder area

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  8. Hope Kate is okay now.. So she can play and move just like before.

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