Low Blow!!!

I'll try to do a longer post tomorrow. Holly has hip dysplacia and some early arthritic changes, particularly on the left side (the side she has been limping on). The plan for now is keep her on daily Rimadyl, which seems to be keeping her comfortable for now, and do more x-rays in a couple of years (assuming the Rimadyl continues to work for her). Depending on how rapidly the arthritis seems to be progressing based on the next x-rays, I'll decide then about surgery. I have been using Synovi-G3 for several years now, and have added ester-C and have increased her fish oil. I'm slowly increasing the C, planning to top out at 750 a day. Right now I'm using the same ester-C liver flavored tabs from PetSmart that I used to give her, but will probably switch to some people grade C since the quality is probably better.

Needless to say, this has been a huge blow, but honestly I was expecting it, so it wasn't really shocking. I'm sad she's going to miss out on doing agility. I will still do rally and obedience with her as long as she can, and I'm going to work hard at keeping her weight lean and keep her well exercised with long, moderate paced walks. More than anything I'm just worried about her future quality of life. Unfortunately, I know what it's like to live with cronic pain, and I hate to think of her living like that. . . I will certainly have surgery done if that's what she needs, but that's scary too; surgery itself is dangerous, and there's always the chance that the surgery may go wrong and leave her in more pain. On the other hand, cardigrandma has an artificial hip, and everything went well with both the initial surgery and the surgery last summer to replace worn out parts.

Bottom line, it's just a real croc of sh!t to have such a young dog on drugs for life, or in pain, or facing surgery and not able to do all the activities that we enjoyed together!

More tomorrow. . .