Dreaded Hip Dysplasia

Dec. has been quite a month for us. Melli got her overhaul (dental including a couple loose front teeth removed, removal of a large benign follicular cyst) and has recovered well. We found a stitch the vet overlooked and our hero, Daddy, was able to remove it using his miraculous skills as a plane/train model builder.

Cubby is doing perfectly.

Then . . . there's the shepherd. First off, he had to change food. I think I will post that in another thread because it is rather surprising what I learned. Then, at almost 5 years old, I took him for his first dental. They cleaned up just lovely. However, my feral shepherd pup neutered by the shelter at 3 months has been having some limping on his rear right and so I did x-rays. He has mild-to-moderate hip dysplasia. There is bone resurfacing a bit but not into spurs and such. The hips do ride in the sockets but there is a bit of a gap.

SO . . . he is on Dasaquin with MSM (I put all 3 dogs on it), we are using more baby gates to prevent dashing up and down the stairs, and we are working (with Daddy) to stop the "jump up and say HI thing".

Anyone have any other good maintenance tips? Shay thanks you.

 

Thank you. Shay is doing better. None of the flat out hopping, but he does stretch a lot after getting up and will slightly favor and then recover with a bit of motion.

He was pretty lean. Now he is noticeably leaner. I will be lowering him gram by gram until we get the ribs. I switched from Acana to Fromm and am having to do some fine tuning on his amount since they are pretty different in calories.