Nobody's Perfekt Dogs and Cats

Here is an update on Alice, the Cane Corso 11 month old puppy with a knee fracture and bilateral hip dysplasia. She was spayed last week, then had orthopedic surgery the following day on her knee. The expectation was that the fractured piece of the femur would be screwed back in place. That isn't what ended up happening. Once the surgeon opened up the knee, things were more complicated than expected. Unlike the first surgeon with whom we consulted who felt that this was a congenital issue and not trauma related, this surgeon did think she was likely hit by a car and there was more damage than originally thought. Under normal circumstances we would have opted to amputate the leg, but again because of the hip dysplasia (a congenital issue) amputation was not a great option. The surgeon did some "rearranging" of the bone fragments, hoping that in 2-3 weeks, fibrous material will grow and keep everything together. It is possible that she may need a total knee replacement in the future.

We moved her to a new foster home with no other dogs, and lots of sedatives in hopes of keeping her calm and constrained to a pen or crate while she is healing.

Even though, social media is not a good place for dog rescue groups these days, we owe our followers some updates on our recent rescues. Our first update is on Allie. She was scheduled for euthanasia due some fear issues while at the shelter and some significant unexplainable mobility issues. Once she was out of the shelter, her fear issues quickly dissipated, but we needed to get to the bottom of her intermittent joint difficulties. It was determined that she had a lot of inflammation in her knee and elbow joints. We did a lot of lab work to rule out tick-borne diseases, heartworm, etc. which all came back negative. We put her on antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs. She did pretty good, but once the anti-inflammatory drugs were discontinued, she was back at square one. We took fluid samples from her joints and sent them to the lab for a pathology evaluation. The results showed neutrophilic inflammation a condition called Immune-mediated polyarthritis (IMPA), which is very similar to rheumatoid arthritis in humans. This is a condition that she will likely struggle with over the long term with periodic flare-ups. She is currently on a round of prednisone to address the inflammation.

The shelter listed her as a lab and pointer mix, which seems highly plausible by just looking at her. We did do DNA testing to see if their were any genetic clues to her ailments (there were none), but we were quite surprised by her breed analysis. She is pretty much everything but lab and pointer - a real Heinz 57.