Adopting paralyzed dog so questions..

[Walkswithdog]

Hi! I’m Cher. I’m not new to K9 medical rehab. Been a fosterer if special needs dogs for a few decades. This little girl came across my radar and well, she’s coming to us. The wheelies I have worked with weren’t paralyzed. Monkey ( changing that name) was hit by car as a pup and is as healed as they’ve managed to get her to this point. She generally has full bladder and bowel control, , she’s gained weight and drags well. Is using wheels intermittently. Hasn’t had much true PT there aren’t any real resources where she lived so any real rehab is ours to do.where do I start? I thought I’d start studying before she gets here?

Right now both hind legs stick out stifly. That can’t be comfortable. She has and is acclimated to her chair but she does more of the drag thing at this point. What are our options for trying to work with her leg and hip muscles? What therapies have helped others? That stiff hip angle has to be painful what can we do to help that? Is there a point at which you consider amputation because they’re doing more harm than good? She’s only nine months old. I’d think long term a fixed stiff leg position would be hard on her hips and back.

What websites do I need to study?

What videos do I need to watch?

What questions should I be asking?

And thanks for being here. Pictures after I remember how ...

[critters]

and congrats on the new baby! Quite a few of the more severely disabled spinal cord injured furs can develop contractures, and I wonder if that's what's happened here. If you amputate both legs, would she be able to use wheels? I know they make special saddles for amputees, but is bilateral doable? I don't know.

[CarolC]

Hi! I’m Cher. I’m not new to K9 medical rehab. Been a fosterer if special needs dogs for a few decades. This little girl came across my radar and well, she’s coming to us. The wheelies I have worked with weren’t paralyzed. Monkey ( changing that name) was hit by car as a pup and is as healed as they’ve managed to get her to this point. She generally has full bladder and bowel control, , she’s gained weight and drags well.


She has bowel and bladder control? Woohoo! It means she's not completely paralyzed.

Is using wheels intermittently. Hasn’t had much true PT there aren’t any real resources where she lived so any real rehab is ours to do.where do I start? I thought I’d start studying before she gets here?

How big is your dog? It makes a difference on what kind of PT you can do. In general, I feel the most effective PT is hydrotherapy, along with daily exercises such as bicycling the legs, stimulating the paws, resistance exercises, and assisted standing.

Right now both hind legs stick out stifly. That can’t be comfortable.

Many paralyzed dogs will sit in a "baby doll" position on their bottom with their tail behind and their legs sticking straight forward. It seems to be comfortable for them. The legs are not necessarily locked at the knees though. Do you know if she can bend her knees? If they are truly stiff and unmoveable when you get her, I would recommend getting her evaluated by a professional canine physical therapist if you can afford it and have it available. By the time I got Dolly she was 7 months old and her knee was locked. We tried professional PT for several months but they never could get much flexibility in the leg so we just accepted that was the way it was going to be, but you don't know till you try. In Dolly's case, we considered amputating her leg (her other leg was already missing so she would have been a bilateral amputee, but I decided not to. The leg helps keep her diaper on, and she can get up on it and kind of pogo if she really wants, and most of all, even though it does not bend, she uses it to scratch her head and neck, and that must be so satisfying.

Something else to consider is hygiene. If you have a female dog dragging, there is the chance of road dirt getting into the girl parts, and since the urinary tract is in the same spot as the female area, you have the potential for infection. If your dog is dragging with her legs behind her, it is also keeping her girl parts up off the floor. If she has no legs, it is likely there will be more contact between her bottom and the floor. Also, like Dolly, if you decide you want to keep her in a diaper in order to protect her from germs on the floor (or because she may leak occasionally) the diaper will stay on much, much better with legs. Even with Dolly, with only one hind leg, her diaper stays on, however she does bypass the diaper and leak out the side with no leg if she lies on that side just right.

Like critters says, if you are considering double amputation (which I wouldn't do unless it was medically necessary) you'd do best to call the cart companies and find out what options are available for a double amputee dog. If they've done one before, they should be able to send you a photo as an example. I've seen pictures of a double amputee dog in a wheelchair, I think I saw one on one of the calendars. The thing is, a paralyzed dog can't spend too long in a wheelchair, usually a couple of hours is plenty (if the dog is otherwise strong and healthy like your puppy will be), then the dog needs to be taken out to rest. So she will be spending the majority of her time not in a cart.

She has and is acclimated to her chair but she does more of the drag thing at this point. What are our options for trying to work with her leg and hip muscles? What therapies have helped others? That stiff hip angle has to be painful what can we do to help that? Is there a point at which you consider amputation because they’re doing more harm than good? She’s only nine months old. I’d think long term a fixed stiff leg position would be hard on her hips and back.

I know what you're saying. But it partly depends on what kind of dog it is. Some dogs are able to twist their torso more easily and gracefully than others. For example, a short bodied dog like a pug may not be able to twist as easily as a dachshund. So you kind of need to observe your dog and see how she actually moves. But actually, there are dogs that are born with straight legs. I would not amputate. One of the moderators here, Joanne, had a number of these dogs born that way because of genetics. They are called straight leg shepherds. They can walk and run. If your dog has bowel and bladder control it makes me very hopeful she can gain some use of her hind legs, and they don't care how it looks when they walk, they are happy to be walking around stiff legged or not. Here is a post by Joanne, and also a video of some of her straight leg dogs.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=15053&p=80035
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9ethv-YY7s

What websites do I need to study?

There are a lot of links here:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=10626

Here are some individual sites to try. Each one is a lot of reading.
https://scoutshouse.com
http://www.dodgerslist.com/
http://murphysworld.jaisp.com/
https://tinkerbeagle.blogspot.com/searc ... date=false (start at the end and work forward, it's a blog and displays oldest posts last)

What videos do I need to watch?

In general, I just go to youtube and put in searches such as "dog physical therapy" "paralyzed dog" "FCE dog recovery" and things like that. (Your dog does not have FCE or IVDD, but the exercises will still apply to your dog.) Does she actually have a spinal fracture, or do you know? Was there any known injury to the pelvis or hip joints?

What questions should I be asking?

And thanks for being here. Pictures after I remember how ...

Would love to see pictures, that would be so helpful. When you are composing a reply, there is a tab below called ATTACHMENTS. That will let you upload. Some of the photos takes by smartphones with high resolution may be too big to attach, so you may need to resize them using https://www.online-image-editor.com/ or something like that. Please do, I would really love to see your dog. Not sure if you are fostering or adopting, but it's great of you to do it.

[Walkswithdog]

Here she is. She’s sorta whippet sized.

The straight leg Shepherd video makes me hopeful.
They’re calling her Monkey, that’ll change.

[CarolC]

She's beautiful. I agree, Monkey doesn't nearly fit her.

The legs really do look stiff, I see what you mean. I'm not sure they're going to be able to do much about that, but I'd ask a therapist anyway (if one is available). It appears her toes are curled under a little, too. In order to walk, it would help if they could get her to where she is able to bear weight on her pads. There are boots, splints, or a number of orthopedic appliances that can help eliminate foot drop if the problem is simply knuckling. (Please ask if you want links.) If it is such a contracture that her toes cannot be flexed at all, then she might want foot protection if she is going to walk straight legged on her toes (like a ballerina en pointe). I don't know though, I'm just watching Joanne's video and her dogs are not running on their pads as far as I can tell, and they are not using foot protection...very cool! It is all hypothetical, but it seems like she could do it if she gets enough movement back to swing her legs. Dogs have a way of making the most of what they have. Is there any movement in the hips at all? What would be great is if they could upload a video of her being active for you, so you could get a better idea.

[critters]

My Koi boy's foot was contracted like that, and I had to get him custom shoes and splints. He had been shot in the spine, and his left foot was the contracture problem. Without protection, his skin broke down from walking on it.

[CarolC]

I was just looking at her photo again and noticed they have a disposable underpad there with her blanket. Is that because they want a pad handy for her to move onto if she needs to urinate voluntarily, or is it because she sometimes leaks? Do you know if they are sending diapers with her? I wonder if part of your preparations for her arrival might be to buy her some diapers. She could start out in disposables if needed (cut a hole for the tail, human baby diapers may fit better worn backward with the tapes to the back), but if the rescue who is sending her already has some washable diapers that fit her well, they could tell you what brand and size and maybe you could get a few extra.

I was really lucky when I got Dolly at 7 months old. The foster had already figured out what kind of diapers fit her and sent several with her. I didn't have to spend money trying different brands to find some that worked. Different brands of diapers fit differently, just as blue jeans fit humans differently. The kind Dolly wears is the denim kind, then we put a Poise pad (or in her case I cut a pad in half) inside to line them.

There is a wide variety of dog diapers. There are knit ones, that I think are not that good for dogs that drag because you need to be able to fasten the waist snugly without a lot of stretch. There are fancy ones which may be better suited for dogs in season. There are the kind that have built in absorbency. They vary but I think some of them are designed more with leakage in mind, and not necessarily a full void. But since she has some bladder control, that might be all you need. They tend to cost a little more. This post shows a picture of the kind of diapers Dolly wears. I feel like the denim holds up to dragging as well as anything. She eventually wears through the seat, but it takes quite a while. I haven't tracked exactly how long they last but I think maybe a couple of years?

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=20450&p=103870#p103870