Had to rush Tango to the vet :(

Had to rush Tango to the Vet this morning. he's my little 4 pound chihuahua. His back right leg was giving him trouble last night, totally out of the blue. He and his chi sister Jazz are both x-penned during the day, so I can see no way he could have hurt himself whike I was gone.. And there have been no atypical activities during the week to account for him not being able to put weight on the leg. But all the gentle poking and moving and palpating of the area caused him no apparent pain, and he was eating and eliminating normally and it didn't appear to hurt him to squat, so I decided to wait 24 hours to see if it resolved. But this morning when I got up , he could no longer put weight on his left front leg either Again no obvious signs of pain, and normal behavior in other regards, but that was it for me. Put in a rush call in to my vet who said bring him in immediately. They wanted to keep him for the day to x-ray, run tests, observe etc. I'm quietly panicking, worried it's something neurological, or worse. So completely out of the blue!! He's almost 8, but he's always been very healthy. Not overweight, no hip or patella issues, no illnesses of any kind other than irritating allergy stuff. Please cross your fingers, pray, send good mojo, whatever your thing is, that this isn't as serious as I'm worried it's going to be.

 

Sorry to hear about your pup. Hope all is well soon.

 

Poor Tango, I hope everything turns out O.K. Pets rarely tell you something till it's panic time. I'll cross everything short of getting a cramp. Looking to hear good news from the vet.

Jerry

 

Oh, I hope it is something minor and easily fixed. I've got my fingers crossed Tango.

 

Thanks for all your well-wishes about Tango.

Unfortunately the vet is somewhat perplexed. The X-rays show no fractures or joint issues or anything that would explain his symptoms satisfactorily, and the blood work is normal. He has some very slight soft tissue swelling in his front leg, (sort of like a sprain or pulled muscle in a human) but there's nothing going on that he can see in his back leg. So he's treating the symptoms for now with Metacam, one of the gentler anti-inflammatories, and asked that Paige (he knows she used to be a vet tech) check Tango frequently for swollen lymph nodes which would indicate something systemic like Lyme disease (even though the bloodwork isn't showing that yet.) If the meds are going to work, he should start responding to them today. Other than that, we wait and see.

Tango's the cream chi, that little dude on the right

 

I finally remembered that our Chihuahua was showing symptoms like you described. When I took her to the vet she did blood work and x-rays but couldn't find anything wrong. After asking me a lot of questions, she finally asked it Lucy was jumping off anything tall. YES! She was jumping out of our tall 4 wheel-drive truck. When we made her wait for me to lift her out her problems stopped. I don't know if this would apply to Tango but thought I'd let you know.

 

Any news (hopefully good) about Tango??

 

Ronni, hope fully that it is only a pulled muscle. To much jumping up and down maybe. Hope Tango is back to his old self soon.

 

I thought I'd updated this a couple weeks back! Sorry.

Looks like he's gonna be on these meds, as needed, from here on out.

It took a couple days for him to respond to the meds after I first started administering them, and there was a little back and forth, but finally I was able to see an improvement. The symptoms totally disappeared after about 10 days, so I took him off the meds completely. After a few days, the limp (particularly in the front leg) started coming back. I waited a bit, to see if it was just some acute thing that would go away, but no...it just kept getting worse. So I put him back on the meds again, and after several days, it was gone again.

I need to talk to the Vet again, and see what I need to do as kind of a maintenance thing, because that seems to be what's indicated at this point. Meanwhile I've just started giving him the meds every other day to see if that doesn't keep him limp and pain free. The smallest possible amount over the longest time period is what I'm going for.

Metacam is a fairly benign anti-inflammatory, but still, continued heavy use will compromise the organs, ultimately shortening lifespan. There are other anti-inflammatories that are gentler on the system, but accurate dosing just isn't possible for a 4 pound dog. Most of them are in pill form, and chopping them up to get a Tango sized dosage doesn't work. Which is why he's on the Metacam....it's a suspension, so dosing a dog his size with a liquid medication is the most practical. I'm going to be exploring some other potential medication options with the vet, to see if there's anything else we can come up with for the least possible damaging impact on his system.

Regardless, it's a delicate balancing act. I don't want to make Tango struggle on for years in pain, but neither do I want to truncate his life more than necessary by over-dosing him.

The upside to all this is that he's feeling much better, bouncing around once again like the goofball I'm used to!