Case History 1.
What better place to start than right at home?
Madison.
Madison is my own dog, A seven year old yellow Labrador. Purchased from a reputable show breeder as a nine-week-old puppy, sensibly raised with proper nutrition, exercise regime strictly adhered to.
Madison is a show dog, won many awards and at the age of 18 months was also trained to do a small amount of gundog work. She has had three healthy litters of puppies and has been bought back to the peak of physical fitness each time.
At the age of five Madison began to limp on her left foreleg, She began to ‘slow down’, “Madison didn’t seem to want to play as hard as the others”.
X-rays showed severe arthritis of the elbow, treatment was a Cortisone injection in the joint under GA. This eased the condition and Madison was able to carry on her normal everyday life. She once again played hard.
Eighteen months later the injection wore off and she began to present the lameness again, this was managed by oral administering of Metacam. A few months later however (January 2007), I noticed some ‘clicking’ on her rear right leg and some stiffness on rising, and just an ‘off movement’ which the vet could not see but her I was adamant “she just isn’t moving that back leg fully” not wanting to do x-rays just yet more Metacam was prescribed.
Then in July 2007 Madison went down and refused to move, obviously in a great deal of pain, the Metacam was not enough to help her so I took her back to the vet. The vet did extensive x-rays. Result is, the arthritis present in left elbow remains unchanged, also there is severe arthritis in her right stifle (hence the clicking and lack of full extension), in addition Madison has Spondylitis of the spine, fused in three places, which would also account for the lack of correct leg extension.
As Madison is relatively young the vet did not like to inject the affected joints once again, so a different treatment was embarked on. Another steroid based anti-inflammatory painkiller. PLT’s. However the long term effects on the stomach in not favourable. So Madison was started on two tabs twice a day in the hope of reducing this to a minimal maintained amount of one week on, one week off.
The medication was reduced slowly to one tablet once a day for one week, then we did try the ‘one week off’ but after two days was presenting lameness and an unwillingness from Madison to do much. So Madison was put back on a maintenance dose of one and a half tablets twice a day. Which we, and the vet feel is too much for her.
The vet suggested Madison was started on Hills J/D diet. According to Hills, their J/D diet has been formulated to ease joint problems and results should be seen within 21 days. Not wanting to keep Madison on such high doses of steroid based medication I agreed to give this J/D a try. I also emailed Hills to ask them what they had added to their food to allow them to make such extravagant claims. For two months Madison was eating nothing but J/D and she failed to respond. (at a cost of £60 per month I found it an expensive lesson). After hearing back from Hills nutrition experts I decided to do some research of my own to find out why Madison had not responded to the diet.
At this stage, Madison is carrying on her day to day life with a limp. She is allowed a LITTLE free running but then has more lameness in the evening. On rising she is stiff on the back end, after a little ‘clicking’ can move about satisfactorily.
On Monday 24th September, Madison was started on the supplements my research had led me to, within 3 days her limp was almost non existent! We have been so thrilled with this that we begun to reduce Madison’s prescription medication with confidence. The tablets have slowly been reduced and for the last five days days, Madison has had NO prescription medication at all. I’m not certain how long she can actually go without, but we will aim for what the vet suggested, one week off, one week on.
Her movement is not perfect, she has a slight off movement trotting on her left foreleg, but she is able to run at full speeds, obviously she is not allowed to keep that up.
Update. October 21
Madison managed the five days without medication and began to show signs of being uncomfortable, therefore I have decided that for her, the best solution is five days on medication, five days medication free with the addition of our supplements every day.
