[Dailydrool] Sprain/strain in front leg?

[Maura DeYong]

My Bloodhound, Tank, (Sweet Polly Basset's long legged brother) has something wrong with his front left leg/paw. We were walking Monday evening, and he decided to bark and lunge at a little fuzzy dog behind a fence. He hates little fuzzy dogs. Well, in doing that, he yelped and I figured he stepped on a rock or a stick. He kept walking like nothing happened. 
Yesterday, he was pretty low key, and we got ready to go for our evening walk at the park(we had skipped the morning walk) and we all piled into the car, even Sweet Polly wanted to go. Well, Tank sees a little dog coming down the street, and starts to bark and thow a hissy fit. Then he starts to whine badly and hold his left paw up. I knew there was something terribly wrong because he never whines, ever. I got him out of the car, and we laid down on the driveway for a long time. The two legged teenager slave took the other dogs for a walk. Polly laid by Tank and took a nap on the driveway. :) 
Last night he limped around and went to bed. I gave him a baby aspirin before he went to sleep. I think he pulled a muscle possibly????   There's no swelling in the leg. He yelped a few times throughout the night when he would move around. But this morning, he got up to pee and I fed him and gave him 3 more baby aspirin. He was moving around pretty well after breakfast, and now he is snoring away in the living room. 
Any ideas for him besides the aspirin?  I'm not ready to run him to the vet at this point since he was moving pretty well an hour ago. I will keep a close eye on him today. He is never sick, or hurt, so it is hard to see this big tough dog limping around. He's always been a pillar of strength. He is almost 7, so maybe age is starting to catch up with him. He had a checkup two weeks ago and everything was fine. 
Thanks!
Maura 


      
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.dailydrool.org/pipermail/dailydrool-dailydrool.org/attachments/20100526/4e47960b/attachment-0002.htm>