[Dailydrool] Dwarfism and Mutants (kind of long)

[Beverly Szaton]

I really don't know much about orthopedics but I know more than I ever
wanted to, compliments of Llewis. When Llewis was born and the puppies
started moving around we noticed right away that he wasn't moving the way
the others were. The co-breeder who has lots of experience but wasn't here,
kept telling me he was just a basset puppy and not to worry. But I did.
John and I thought something was wrong, and my friend who was right here
looking at him thought there was something wrong, so off we went to see
Uncle John the Vet and he wasn't sure but thought something was wrong
(Llewis was just a few weeks old) and so he hobbled his rear legs together
with tape so he could use them, and that helped, and for a short time we
thought he would be ok.
But he wasn't.
And as he got older (not much) it became apparent that there was really
something critically wrong. He dragged his rear, or could only get up for a
moment. He fell a lot. He couldn't keep up altho he tried.
Back to Uncle John the Vet and this time we took a robust sister with us
and we xrayed both. It was obvious that Llewis's xray bore no resemblance
to his sister's. Not in the rear end. There seemed to be pieces of the
puzzle missing.

So off to U of Wisconsin with my 6 week old puppy who had trouble walking,
and they were of course enchanted (Llewis was a lover) and after a day of
tests and rads and pokes and prods byt the ortho guys they came back with
the official diagnosis and I quote
"He's a mess"

They didn't know what to do. Pieces of bone were actually just not there,
part of his femur, part of his hip, part of his patella on that one back
leg. Plus he had obvious neurological deficiencies -- slow conscious
proprioception in the other rear leg and one front leg: he was cryptorchid,
his balance was very poor-- he fell down a lot. But he was unaware of these
things, and he was a happy, bouncy puppy.

Off we went to re-hab. We did, every week, drive an hour and a half to have
acupuncture, chiropractic work, massage and cuddles. We had a state-of
-the-art brace made for his rogue legs, trying to force it to bend the way
we thought it should. And we did this for weeks, months, until the re-=hab
people thought nothing was helping and requested a consult with an
orthopedics guy and so we called Dr Lou and he came down and looked at the
rads and looked at Llewis and roared GET THAT BRACE OFF OF HIM!! It turned
out the one thing he needed most was muscle development, and the one thing
the brace did was keep that from happening.

Of course the re-hab didn't work. Looking back I wonder how I could have
been so dumb. It wasn't something FIXABLE. It was missing bone. It wasn't
going to re-appear. No amount of acupuncture makes bone grow, no chiro
stimulates bone growth. It may have made him more comfortable, and it
certainly gave him a lot of fun, but it was useless as a treatment.
Take him home, Dr Lou said: let him be a puppy! Let him learn to run around
and play. He'll never be right but he'll be fine.

The moral is that if you own or breed a mutant breed you are going to have
puppies now and then that are just not right at all.
The question is what you do with them. You don't breed them. You don't sell
them. You don't put them down if they have a chance at all. You just love
them up and let them be puppies. And they grow up into dogs with problems
orthopedically that you deal with as they happen. Llewis is almost 6 now,
and yes, he is starting to have some issues with turning and going up and
down even one step. But the tail works, and the tongue, and he is still our
lover-dog. Mild little Llewis, who has been through so much and continues
to be even tempered and sweet.

Take care of your mutants. They have big hearts.

MomPerson to Llewis, his full brother Nigel is who is now down in the rear,
and Conley (not directly related)
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