call2arms wrote:If you have absolutely no idea what it is, I'd stick with boring walks, since you can't tell which kind of movement can trigger pain/further injury. This sucks.
You're right, it does suck. On the up side, Renee is trying to run around like an idiot today, so I think she must be feeling better. I'm going to try to keep her calm for the whole two weeks like the vet suggested, but I may start doing some very short, low key walks.
Malli wrote:Is she lame on a front or hind leg? Is the lameness obvious or more difficult to localize for you visually? How old is Renee? Does she have any other abnormal pattern of gait or odd walk? If so, for how long?
Front left leg. It was obvious at first, particularly when she got up after laying still for a while. In the past week, it's been less obvious, and not all the time. No other oddities to her walk. Renee is almost five years old.
What concerned me more was that she was not wanting to eat, and just laying around a lot. I took her to the vet the first time because she wouldn't get out of bed one morning. And then Monday she hardly got out of bed all day and barely came to the door to see me when I got home, so I took her in again. Last night she ate all dinner and this morning she was looking for breakfast and she's acting much more like herself today, so I think she must be feeling better. It almost makes me think that she was actually feeling bad from something else, like a stomach bug or a cold or something, and I mistakenly thought it was because her leg was hurting her. I didn't see any symptoms, but she had a tiny bit of green snot a week or so ago, but she had just gotten a bordatella vaccine a few days before that, so I chalked it up to that. When I never saw snot again and she never coughed or sneezed or anything, I figured she was fine, but I wonder if she was feeling crappy even though she didn't have any other symptoms and the limp really wasn't any big deal and I just assumed it was the whole problem.
Now, so we don't get in trouble for being off topic...I worked with Renee last night and today on resting her chin in my hand, pressing her nose up against my palm, or pressing her head sideways into my palm depending on where I held my hand. I think she's starting to figure it out, and she stays relatively still when we practice. We also started on some object discrimination with my cell phone and two dog toys. That is not going quite as well, but we're making progress. Every time I think she's figuring it out, she shows me that she's really only guessing.
I appreciate all the good thoughts. I'm going to keep a close eye on her, and we'll go back to the vet if I see any signs that she's getting worse, or if she hasn't gotten better in the two weeks, but I have stopped freaking out quite so much.