Anyone ever hear of HOD?

[Christine]

Noah's Ark is a wonderful rescue foundation that takes extreme cases noone else would spend the time or money to help. Pearl is one of their most recent. If anyone has any ideas or further resources for them to investigate, I will pass the information on to them.

COLUMBIA, SC....Sweet PEARL was found in an abandoned homes yard in Los Angeles, California and taken to a shelter in LA that can only hold animals in this condition for a short time before being put them down. We were contacted to help her. She is a 12 week old BOXER puppy. She was seen by a doctor in California and then transported to Columbia, SC for her medical care and rehab. This adorable little puppy is emaciated, has Bacterial Pneumonia and has a Developmental Orthopedic Disease. We have had her for a week treating her most urgent need which is the pneumonia. She is still very sick but doing much better. We have done every test known to man to determine the cause of her bone disfiguration and still do not have a definitive diagnosis. She was originally diagnosed with HOD (Hypertrophic Osteodystrophy). The problem with that is that her bone problems are in the middle of her long bones and HOD is generally on the end of the bones. We are still waiting for her final pathology test to come back. If it is a form of HOD it will be a long time before it corrects itself. Puppies that have this will sometimes end up with deformed limbs because of the disease. We will do corrective surgery if that happens and will be monitoring her all along the way. Her legs are extremely painful and she has to be kept on pain meds and anti-inflammatory medicine for a long time while she is growing into her bones. Right now she has a terribly high fever and we are dealing with that and the pneumonia. This is one of the cutest, sweetest little pups you will ever see. How anyone could have ever abandoned her is beyond comprehension. Once she is over the pneumonia and is stable she will be going to a rehab facility where she will get round the clock care to control her pain and to also do a mild form of rehab to keep her legs from atrophying. Sweet Pearl will be with us for a long time until we have done everything we can to correct a lifetime of pain and suffering and give her the best possible chance of living a normal life.

PEARL has really had a terrible life up until now and still has a long road of recovery ahead of her. She is feeling a little better and is getting up and walking around. She need to keep her as comfortable and as quiet as possible because her legs hurt so bad and a lot of movement causes them to hurt that much more and then we have to up her pain meds which we do not want to do. She is comfortable but so much that she wants to move around a lot. All of our tests have come back except for two. They were all negative. The two that we have not gotten back deal with fungus and coccidia. We are doing lots of tests for Valley Fever which can cause this type of leg swelling and fevers. We will know more about those tests next week. I have been jumping up and down for the labs in Colorado to get me the lab results. These particular tests require growing bone cultures and that takes a while that process to happen. We should have the test results this coming week. Sweet PEARL will be with us until we get her through whatever it is that she has. As soon as we know more of what we are dealing with then Pearl will go a special rehab center where she will get water rehab, acupuncture, and a holistic protocol to increase her chances of getting through this with her legs developing as normal as possible during this next critical growing period. Once we know more of the costs for the rehab, we will send around another Chip-In but not until we get everything together. Thanks for caring about this wonderful little pup. She is so sweet and endearing that it just breaks our heart to see her in so much pain.

Please, help us help her by donating.
We are a 501c3 and all donations are tax deductible.

Contact is:
NoahsArksRescue@mac.com
4084 Spring Island
Okatie, SC 29909

[CarolC]

Christine I've never heard of it but I looked it up.
http://www.vetsurgerycentral.com/hod.htm

It looks like the New Jersey Boxer Rescue had one of these pups a couple of years ago, they might be able to help.
http://www.njboxerrescue.com/support-njbr.html (Scroll down to June 2009)

[Christine]

Carol....thanks! I will pass this information on to Noah's Ark. It is so encouraging to hear that the little boxer was helped.

[Debbie-Spain]

We have seen a couple of cases of HOD here in Spain. At the time I found a lot of useful information on the Great Dane Lady's website, she has seen lots of cases of HOD (she's not a vet but a nutritionist) and it might be worth you contacting her to see if she has seen any similar cases to Pearl... as far as I can see, it does look similar to HOD but not quite, the swelling as you say, seems to be rather more mid-bone than in HOD.

http://www.greatdanelady.com/articles.htm

Check the articles on HOD and puppies with bowing legs etc, to start. We followed the diet she was recommending a few years back to great success with a case we helped here. I think now she markets her own diets, she has been writing about HOD for years...

Hope this helps, and I hope the cause and a solution can be found for Pearl

Debbie
http://www.elclubdekat.org

[Christine]

Thanks, Debbie...I shared this information. We are all praying for little Pearl. I hope you are well.